One of the cornerstones of the 'Bioeconomy' will rest on our ability to exploit renewable carbon resources to produce environmental eco-friendly fuels and chemicals that will profitably replace those derived at present from fossil resources. The POLYDHB project is in frame with this endeavour. This project originality stands on previous works carried out by two partners of this proposal which have exploited synthetic biology toolbox combined to metabolic and enzymes engineering to construct a synthetic pathway that leads to the microbial production of a non-naturally metabolite 2,4-dihydroxybutyric acid (DHB) from renewable carbon sources (i.e. sugars). Initially conceived as a precursor for the synthesis of the methionine to target the field of animal nutrition, this molecule actually turns out to be a unique ‘green’ platform chemical for the production of other bio-based products with application in chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The purpose of the POLYDHB project is here to demonstrate that DHB can be used as an original non-natural monomer for the production of new bio-sourced and biodegradable polymers. The scientific and technical challenges of this project will be realized through three workpackages: (I) production of pure enantiomers and lactide /lactone derived from DHB, (II) development of a chemocatalytic process of (co)polymerisation of DHB and/or its lactone and lactide derivatives alone or with other monomers, and (III) conception of a microbial process for the synthesis of DHB-based polymers. In each of these workpackages, scientific risks have been identified and contingency solutions clearly proposed. To succeed in this objective, a multidisciplinary and complementary core of expert in the field of Systems and Synthetic Biology (LISBP, Toulouse), Polymer Chemistry (LCPO, Bordeaux) with the participation of a Japanese team expert in molecular biology of bio-sourced polymers has been set-up. Moreover, the strong commitment of the industrial partner Adisseo in this project is not solely justified by its indispensable position in mastering the chemical and microbial process for DHB production, but it is also an asset for the industrial exploitation of this molecule on markets other than nutrition animal that can be opened from the results obtained in this project. The ambition of POLYDHB project is to reach the technology readiness level of 4 within the 3 years period.

The durability of materials exposed to corrosive conditions is a major stake as it affects process and plant safety and implies large costs. In real applications and in future “zero emission technologies”, metallic alloys are and will be subjected to oxidizing and water-rich environments at high temperature. Under such conditions, the volatilization of the chromia scale takes place, speeding up the material end of life. While the chromium loss due to volatilization has been estimated many times to assess the material lifetime in past and recent studies, the gas phase evolution and its influence on the volatilization rate are rarely considered although they affect the alloy end of life. To respond to such problem, the DYNAMIC project, which associate 3 academic labs with 2 industries, proposes to evaluate the high temperature oxidation of refractory metallic alloys and the volatilization of their protective oxide layer by an original approach combining high temperature oxidation tests and simulations of the gas phase. Oxidation tests will be carried out between 600 and 1100 °C, under intermediate to high gas velocities (from few tens of cm.s-1 to few m.s-1) and over the complete water vapour content range, i.e. from few ppm to nearly 100 %. Also, characterizations of the samples, before and after oxidation, will be performed. In parallel, the gas phase within the oxidation rigs and the volatilization reaction will be simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This methodology will be conducted to better understand the influence of dynamic flows on oxidation and volatilization kinetics, and therefore the degradation mechanisms at work in such environments. It shall make it possible the determination of laws capable of predicting lifetime and the evaluation of the effects of geometry to propose solutions to delay the end of life of alloys.

The emission of NOx - nitrogen monoxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) - by engines in a confined work environment without ventilation and exhaust treatments represents major health and safety issues. In France, almost 800,000 workers are exposed to such highly toxic NOx emissions. The NOA project aims to develop a NOx adsorption process for non-road vehicles using an optimal adsorbent. It will be loaded and transportable by the worker, to be placed at the exhaust gas outlet of vehicles. The adsorption cartridge needs then to be periodically changed since it works on an accumulative mode, by gas-solid adsorption. The regeneration of the process will therefore take place in time and deported from the vehicle. The operation chosen is the gas-solid adsorption which is more effective than the catalysis at low temperature. Technical obstacles exist; the proposed process has to be selective: to trap NOx without adsorbing water and carbon dioxide, and the affinity of the trapping materials with NOx has not to be too high to allow the regeneration. Therefore, a selection of materials (MOF, zeolites,) with properties required will be made thanks to DFT and GCMC calculations. The goal is to identify the best adsorbents with the highest affinity and largest uptake to NOx in the presence of H2O and CO2. The most promising adsorbents will be synthesized with different morphologies and characterized. A first principle model based on momentum, heat and mass balances will be developed in order to accurately predict the NOx concentration profiles over time at the outlet of a column containing the best adsorbents. Finally, calculations and experiments will be carried out to sizing and design of a transportable device. A technology transfer to companies for its development will be performed at the end of the project. These different activities are not time-sequential but fully interwoven throughout the development stages and the validation of the innovative concepts. The work program is divided into seven work packages (WP) over the 48 months, each WP comprising from 1 to 5 tasks. Five French teams are involved in this project: four academics and one private association (coordinator). The consortium is complementary; it combines the advantages of a multidisciplinary research, involving chemistry of materials, thermodynamic and kinetic analyses, multiscale modelling (molecular simulations and process simulations), process and chemical engineering applications with efficient synergies. It should identify the most promising adsorbents for a highly challenging targeted selective adsorption, and intends to develop industrial tools for occupational risk prevention and environmental protection. Technology transfer to companies for the development and commercialisation of the optimised material(s) and selected process will be dealt with by the coordinator. The NOA project contains an important part of experimental/modelling investigations. Therefore, it requires the recruitment of scientists as follows: two PhD students, one post-doc (18 months) and one master2 student (6 months). It requires also the purchase of manometry equipment for corrosive gas to carry out adsorption isotherms. The project has no rental costs. It does not request funding for the costs of acquiring licenses, patents, copyrights, etc. A consortium agreement will be established between the five partners in the first year of the project. The financial support requested for NOA project stands at 535 k€ for four years, and at 131 man-months (permanent staff). The scientific impact of the work will appear at various levels, with the three following objectives: (i) sharing research results with the scientific community (conferences, publications, etc) (ii) ensuring a wide awareness of the project to both potential end-users and to the general audience (technology transfer) and (iii) disseminating knowledge to people outside of the consortium through training activities.

Reliability and durability are key considerations to successfully deploy Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs). Since the link between materials defects and performances at the scales of the Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) and the stack is now well documented, LOCALI shall provide information about the propagation of these defects to other materials or to other locations in the stack. LOCALI aims to improve the existing systems and will ultimately provide effective tools to control their mass-production, the quality of the stacks and their diagnosis for on-site maintenance (stationary) or for on-board (transportation) applications. To these goals, the study focuses on three main axes, developed for PEMFCs (but which can easily be implemented for E-PEM). Firstly, LOCALI will develop instrumentation dedicated to local current density measurement and local electrochemical impedance spectroscopy: well-instrumented segmented cells and magnetic fields measurement are the core competences to these goals. The second challenge of LOCALI is, by using tailored defective MEAs or thanks to specific operating conditions (flooding, reagent exhaustion, ...) to characterize how local and overall performances of the MEA are affected, and to identify the signatures of the various anomalies. Our target is to identify the source of the heterogeneities as well as to locate degraded areas inside a stack. Finally, LOCALI will enable to track, during ageing, how the initial and controlled defects do propagate upon operation. A particular attention will be paid on two points: (i) does a defect in the one material of the MEA (e.g. a hole in the PEM) influence the local degradation of its neighboring materials (e.g. the catalyst layer); (ii) does the defect propagate spatially, and if so, does it happen only at the MEA scale (e.g. from the inlet to the outlet regions) or at the stack scale (i.e. from the defective cell to its neighboring ones).

The large-scale use of renewable energy, in particular solar energy, requires the development of energy storage technologies to compensate for the intermittent availability of solar radiation. Among all storage methods, the thermochemical storage of energy appears to be particularly interesting due to its high storage density and its potential ability to avoid energy losses. A charge reaction stores the solar energy whereas the reverse discharge reaction gives back this energy whenever it is needed the most. Among the different reactors allowing one to do this for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), Solar Rotary Kilns (SRK) appear to be particularly promising as they can potentially allow the continuous and uninterrupted storage of energy unlike batch and semi-batch reactors. There are, however, two main aspects that need to be further explored. On the one hand, the modelling of solar rotary kilns is still at its infancy and a realistic understanding of the interaction between granular flow, heat transfer and chemical kinetics has yet to be reached. On the other hand, the construction of a directly irradiated SRK with the possibility of adjusting the solid flow rate to the fluctuating radiance of the sun would be highly beneficial. The purpose of the project MULTITHERMO will be to develop a realistic and physically and chemically sound multiphysics model describing all aspects of heat storage in a rotary kiln and to validate it based on the data from a new prototype of SRK and from an already existing electrical rotary kiln and an already existing rotary drum. It will be mainly based on the reduction of BaO2(s) as a promising heat-storing reaction. This reaction will be also studied during the projetc in order to master its chemical kinetics.