OUR TECHNOLOGY

ENERGO’s technology is based on a disruptive and patented method, combining for the first time heterogeneous catalysis, known since the 16th century, and cold plasma of “Dielectric Barrier Discharge” type (DBD), mastered since the 1950s mainly in ozone production.

The technology has been initially developed by the Parisian laboratory 2PM/IRPC from CNRS and Chimie ParisTech within the framework of European Program CEOPS/FP7.

In less than 3 years of development, ENERGO’s team has been able to push the conversion technology from lab scale up to semi-industrial demonstrator. Today ENERGO’s aim is to continue the deployment towards the commercialization of its product.

ENERGO’s technology includes the following innovations:

Coupling between a cold plasma of very low power consumption and a fixed bed of heterogeneous catalysis,
Optimization of the catalyst formulation,
Plasma-catalytic isothermal reactor design.

These innovations offer the following advantages over existing conventional catalytic solutions:

Operation at atmospheric pressure and low temperature, —————————————————————

Compatibility with polluted gases,

50-fold reduction of catalyst volumes,
Instantaneous start-up.

Applied to methanation reaction for instance, these advantages bring a cost reduction of 40% on the production costs (CAPEX + OPEX) compared to currently available solutions*.

 

* Comparison study of methanation technologies carried out by an independent consultant (ENEA Consulting)

The reactor

ENERGO is the first and unique industrial company having developed a patented isothermal reactor solution up to semi-industrial demonstration:

Result of 3 years of optimisation
Combining the heterogeneous catalysis & the DBD plasma in an isothermal environment

The same configuration is almost directly suitable for any gas-phase catalytic reaction (exothermic or endothermic, gaseous and/or liquid products, …)

Plasma-catalytic Technology offers a new pathway for chemistry:

Significantly increases heterogeneous catalysis efficiency,
Fits for any catalytic reaction.

Plasma DBD

Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD), initially called silent discharge, corresponds to a strong electric field applied between two electrodes separated by an insulating dielectric barrier. This technology has been mastered since the 1950s especially for ozone production.

Below, the photograph shows an atmospheric DBD discharge occurring between two steel electrode plates, each covered with a dielectric sheet. The filaments are columns of conductive plasma, and the foot of each filament is representative of the accumulated surface charge.

Heterogeneous catalysis

A large part of chemical conversions which take place in industry is performed via heterogeneous catalysis.

This consists in contacting reagents, most of the time in gaseous form, on a heterogeneous catalyst (solid substance) that increases the speed of a chemical reaction without appearing to participate in this latter.

The figure below presents some examples of commercial catalysts:

Learn more with some publications:

Maria Mikhail, Patrick Da Costa, Jacques Amouroux, Siméon Cavadias, Michael Tatoulian, María Elena Galvez and Stéphanie Ognier, Tailoring physicochemical and electrical properties of Ni/CeZrOx doped catalysts for high efficiency of plasma catalytic CO2 methanation, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental. 294 (2021) 120–233.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apcatb.2021.120233
Bo Wang, Maria Mikhail, Siméon Cavadias, Michael Tatoulian, Patrick Da Costa, Stéphanie Ognier, Improvement of the activity of CO2 methanation in a hybrid plasma-catalytic process in varying catalyst particle size or under pressure, Journal of CO2 Utilization. 46 (2021) 101471.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcou.2021.101471

Maria Mikhail, Patrick Da Costa, Jacques Amouroux, Siméon Cavadias, Michael Tatoulian, Stéphanie Ognier and María Elena Gálvez, Electrocatalytic behaviour of CeZrOx-supported Ni catalysts in plasma assisted CO2 methanation, Catalysis Science & Technology 10, 4532-4543 (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1039/d0cy00312c

Magdalena Nizio, Abdulkader Albarazi, Siméon Cavadias, Jacques Amouroux, María Elena Galvez, Patrick Da Costa, Hybrid plasma-catalytic methanation of CO2 at low temperature over ceria zirconia supported Ni catalysts, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 41 (2016) 11584–11592.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.02.020
Magdalena Nizio, Plasma catalytic process for CO2 methanation, Catalysis, Université Pierre et Marie Curie – Paris VI (2016). NNT: 2016PA066607ff. tel-01612734f