Research themes

I am a CPE Lyon lecturer-researcher, working on intensified catalytic processes for biomass or energy valorization. My research activities are at the interface between heterogeneous catalysis and chemical engineering, focusing on the development and characterisation of multifunctional catalytic reactors for reactions with complex media such as biomass, paying particular attention to the aspects of robustness, modelling and change of scale. I aim to optimize multifunctional reactors via the understanding and modeling of transfer phenomena and reaction kinetics in order to develop sustainable and intensified process without the need for microreactors.

Current projects

I am involved in a project dealing with the reactive distillation of black liquor. Traditionally, the paper industry uses wood as a starting material to produce paper pulp containing mainly cellulose. The other components of wood are degraded in the black liquor, which is then burnt to produce energy. The chemical valorization of black liquor is an important issue for biosourced chemistry. In this topic, reactive distillation will be used to separate and transform organic acids from black liquor from paper industry. Acids will be esterified over a heterogeneous catalyst and the formed esters will be separated by distillation. Reactive distillation is one of the most recognized intensified chemical processes, which integrates separation and reaction in the same unit and allows the separation of chemical mixtures. The main benefits of reactive distillation are improved conversion, significant decrease in investment, operating costs, energy consumption, and by-product formation. Using structured catalytic has a significant effect on process intensification. But using theses structures within a reactive column is challenging because the efficiency of the process can be decrease with a change of hydrodynamic and/or catalyst deactivation or leaching.

I am part of the ANR project SEDRE. It is coordinated by Michel Meyer (LGC) and is a collaboration between LGC, Processium and CP2M. The aim is to develop an innovative reactive distillation process that integrates reactive distillation and heat-integrated DIstillation columns in the same apparatus. For this purpose, innovative catalytic column internals (ICCI) will be developed and characterised. The main challenges are to develop a very innovative geometry made possible by the additive manufacturing and its catalytic functionalization. The final objective is to show that with our technology, energy savings of 30% compared to conventional reactive distillation are achievable.

I am a partner of Cendh(ré) ANR projet coordinated by Pascal Fongarland (CP2M). It is a collaboration between CP2M, LGC and UCCS. The objective is to develop a new intensified process using a heterogeneous enzymatic catalyst. For this purpose, the CENDHRé project proposes to: develop a reactive distillation tool, functionalise the internals of the distillation columns for different scales, implement reactive distillation in trans-esterification on a pilot scale, and provide prospects for the integration of several catalytic functions in DR (enzyme/chemistry coupling).

I am part of the ANR project CatReMo (https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-19-CE43-0005) coordinated by Franck Rataboul (IRCELYON) and is a collaboration between IRCELYON, UCCS and CP2M. It is dedicated to the transformation of raw lignocellulosic biomass into glycols and amino derivatives. CP2M is in charge of kinetic modelling of raw biomass transformation in hydrothermal conditions with multifunctional catalyst. Main objective is to elaborate a model to quantitatively describe LC deconstruction and monomers reactivity with the help of kinetics. Our ambition is to obtain a more complete kinetic model to those described in the literature and able to conciliate reactions in small and large scale reactors.

Partners and extras

I currently work with:

- Laura Reyes Villamizar (PhD student) is working on black liquor reactive distillation. Her PhD is co-funded by Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche, et de l'Innovation and IMust Labex. Her PhD is supervised by me and co-supervised by Léa Vilcocq (CP2M)

- Carlotta Panzone (PhD student) is working on CO2 hydrogenation process towards liquid products within a milli-structured heat exchanger reactor. This project is in collaboration with CEA – LITEN (Alain Bengaouer, Alban Chappaz). In CP2M, her PhD is supervised by Pascal Fongarland and co-supervised by Régis Philippe (CP2M) and me.

- Stefan Kocic (postdoctoral fellowship) is working on modelling of the effect on selectivity of the density of contact (in touch intimacy) and of the distance between two functions (nanoscale intimacy) of a bifunctional catalyst from quantitative data. This project is funded by the ANR (https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-17-CE07-0011) and is performed in collaboration with IRCELYON (DR. Stéphane Loridant) and IC2MP (Pr. Yannick Pouilloux)