CYCLES

The project CYCLES was a 2020 winner of the PREMATURATION call for projects, led by the Innovation Lab of IP Paris.

With the ongoing climate crisis, reducing our carbon emissions is a vital need. Renewable energies offer part of the solution; however, their production is often irregular, and we are lacking scalable and reactive solutions to store their untimely production. This technology solves both problems by using CO2 as raw material upcycled into carbon-neutral fuels.

The Cycles project aims at recycling the CO2 emitted by industrial facilities into methane (CH4).

CO2 plasma for sustainability has been a target of Ecole Polytechnique’s Laboratory of Plasma Physics (LPP) since 2015. LPP has longstanding expertise in nonthermal plasma creation and applications (validated through several spin-off companies). This project builds on fundamental results from the “PIONEER” Horizon2020 European collaboration.

• Cycles uses a novel plasma source based on low pressure (target 0,1bar) radiofrequency discharge. Using metal-based catalyst, the system aims at achieving low-temperature (target ≤200°C), homogeneous and energy-efficient methanation of CO2 through the Sabatier process (CO2 + 4H2 ⟶ CH4 + 2H2O).
• The non-equilibrium characteristics of the plasma allow efficient energy deposition in the molecule, avoiding energy waste in heating and compressing.

• The low-pressure discharge enables homogeneous treatment of effluents, opening the way to rapid conversion of large volumes of exhaust gases.
• The prototype has a strong potential for treating effluents straight at the industry output, avoiding the separation step required with existing treatments.
• Plasma is an easy on-off solution: It can follow factories discontinuous emissions; or the emitted CO2 can be stored and converted at the next excess energy production’s peak. This solves the irregular outputs of renewable energies.
• Methane is a more compact energy storage solution than hydrogen, with a pre-existing mature market and large scope of applications.