While the use of fossil carbon sources, oil, gas and coal, have enabled the fast development of our current society, they have set a linear carbon economy where human activities result in carbon being extracted from the underground and accumulating in the atmosphere. Moving to carbon neutrality imposes to develop a circular carbon economy for the economic sectors where carbon will still be a key player, such as long-range transportation (liquid carbon fuels) and chemicals. For instance, synthetic fuels (e-fuels derived from electricity and solar-fuels derived from sunlight) offer a promising alternative to fossil fuels as they have the highest energy density of all energy storage media, can be stored over long periods of time, and can benefit from current infrastructures for storage, delivery and use. Although current C02 conversion technologies recycle less than 1% of the anthropogenic emissions, the most recent European legislation has set the course for the introduction of e-fuels in aviation fuels, starting in 2030. The underlying scientific questions and technological challenges consist in tackling the efficient conversion of C02, a kinetically and thermodynamically stable molecule, to valuable products using low carbon energy sources such as sunlight and electricity. The current project aims at tackling key challenges inherent to C02 conversion such as maximizing carbon and electron uptake in the production of e-fuels, exploiting the whole solar spectrum in the transformation of C02 to solar-fuels, unlocking the formation of complex molecular structures from C02 and unravelling navel reaction paths for C02 with unconventional activation modes.

Fabrice ODOBEL

CEISAM
Nantes Université
Porteur du projet

Marc ROBERT

Institut Parisien de Chimie Moléculaire (IPCM)
Sorbonne Université