Title: An Overview of Research Work on Biomass Thermochemical Conversion Conducted at CNRS Nancy, France
Time: 9:30-11:30, May.27, 2024
Place: F310, School of Mechanical Engineering
Host: ZHOU Zhongyue, Assoc. Professor (Institute of Aerospace Propulsion)

Biography
Anthony Dufour is a research professor at CNRS (The National Center for Scientific Research, France) working on the thermochemical conversion of biomass and wastes. His main research interests are: fundamentals of biomass and plastics pyrolysis (by mass spectrometry, in-situ analysis, etc.), reactivity of carbons, catalysis for tar reforming or bio-oil hydrodeoxygenation, development of pyrolysis, liquefaction and gasification reactors, interdisciplinary assessment of bioenergy routes. He was instrumental in organising the international symposiums PYRO2016, ISGA2021 (with G. Mauviel) and PyroLiq2019 and 2023 (with F. Berruti, M. Garcia-Perez and W. Prins). He has collaborated with 100+ researchers and currently works with various industrial companies on the development of pyrolysis or gasification processes. Prof. Dufour served as an editor of Journal of Analytical & Applied Pyrolysis (Elsevier) from 2017 to 2020, he is currently executive editor of Energy & Fuels (American Chemical Society).

Abstract
During this talk, I will first introduce our group at CNRS Nancy working on biomass and wastes thermochemical conversion. Our research work deals with the main scales of investigation: from bioenergy routes to reactors, biomass particles and down to molecular mechanisms. The structure of this talk will follow these main scales of investigation, starting from “big scales” to smaller ones. First, I will present our work on the environmental and technical-economical assessment of bioenergy routes with an example about purified H2, heat and biochar production. These assessments are based on detailed modeling of the bioenergy processes under Aspen Plus® software. Then our pyrolysis and gasification reactors will be depicted. Our available reactors range from few milligrams to few kilograms of biomass treated, pressures up to 150 Bars and temperature up to 1000°C. We have different fixed, stirred, auger or fluidized bed reactors. Concerning the mechanisms, I will briefly highlight how we study the main reactions (gas-phase or heterogeneous gas/solid) in tailored micro-reactors and with analysis (like NMR or high resolution mass spectrometry). I will show some results obtained by Prof. L.Y. Jia during his stay in Nancy (notably on catalytic pyrolysis with zeolites) and how we are inspired by the on-line mass spectrometry methods developed by the group of Prof. F. Qi.