Environmental transition

SEED, which stands for Societal, Energy, Environmental, industrial and Digital transitions, is a 60-month interdisciplinary, international and intersectoral doctoral training programme offered by IMT Atlantique and co-funded by the European Union. The programme itself is designed to nurture four key dimensions: thesis interdisciplinarity, internationality, cross-sector experience, and promotion of innovation. It offers 40 fully funded early-stage researcher (ESR) positions within three different tracks. Each track builds on the same fundamental excellence trainings implementing a 4i approach (Interdisciplinarity, Internationality, Intersectorial, Innovation), while providing a different degree of mobility and focus:
 

Recognizing that current storage solutions are unable to stabilize enough the intermintent renewable energy production, new long term energy storage solutions are becoming mandatory. Current long-term energy storage is mainly provided by Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity (PSH). Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) has appeared for decades as a credible alternative but its poor energy efficiency, the need of fossil fuels and the use of existing underground cavities as storage reservoirs have limited its development. Variations to CAES have shown low efficiency, losing a big percentage of energy as heat and mechanical losses. 

Since the 2010s, there is a strong revival of scientific and industrial interest on CAES, led by China and the European Union (EU). For the EU, leading the new generation of high-efficient, low climate-impact and long-term energy storage research, is key to increase its energy independency. 

Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) are production systems designed to be able to adapt to changes in demand. Their flexibility can also make it possible to design sustainable production systems

The MIMOSA project is a European HORIZON-Euratom project started in 2022 and selected on call for projects NRT-01-03 Multi-recycling of spent fuel from Light Water Reactors (LWR). It is coordinated by ORANO with partners such as the SUBATECH laboratory under the triple supervision of the Institut Mines-Télécom through its school, IMT Atlantique, Nantes University and the CNRS with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics (IN2P3) as the main institute. The project will last 4 years and the EU funding is about 6.9 Millions of euros. The MIMOSA project will devise and demonstrate an integrated multi-recycling strategy of plutonium and uranium combining multi- recycling options in LWRs with recycling Pu and other transuranics today considered as waste in Chloride Molten Salt Reactors.

TRANSFEE concerns the acquisition of cutting-edge equipment positioned on the major challenges of tomorrow's industry in the fields of environmental, energy and food transitions. By reinforcing the GEPEA's platforms and technical platforms and by positioning this equipment on a common objective carried by the two different GEPEA supervisors (Nantes University, IMT-Atlantique, ONIRIS, CNRS), TRANSFEE aims to increase scientific excellence while providing concrete solutions on several key issues that are the sober and optimized management of (bio)resources, the preservation of environmental quality (air-water), the material-energy covalorization of residues or industrial waste, and the exploitation of marine resources and in particular microalgae. The TRANSFEE project also consolidates the relationship between research and training by sharing training at all levels (e.g.: BUT, Engineering School, International Master, continuing education).

Electrifying thermal processes as a solution for industry decarbonation.

The WAVEINCORE project aims to develop new desorption technologies applied to the thermal regeneration of amine-based solvents using microwave irradiation (MW) heating. Operating at temperatures below 100°C with the ability to use renewable electricity instead of superheated steam, a drastic reduction in energy penalty and solvent losses are expected, along with a gain regarding the quantities of water required for the process. Going beyond the established proof of concept, the innovative nature of the project lies in the optimized design of laboratory-scale demonstration prototypes, operating MW-assisted regeneration of amine solutions representative of advanced post- combustion CO₂ capture processes. It also includes the development of phenomenological models describing the effect of MW radiation coupled with transfer mechanisms - reactions occurring during the regeneration of typical gas-solvent systems. The consortium brings together two research teams from the GEPEA laboratory, IMT Atlantique and ONIRIS, as well as the company SAIREM.

The project aims to develop cost-effective groundwater monitoring strategies, pollution prevention and abatement technologies, and an early warning system.

Gathering 31 partners from 10 different countries, DECARBOMILE aims to trigger an unprecedented improvement of the green last mile logistics in Europe. To reach that goal, DECARBOMILE relies on a strong experience of decarbonating urban logistics through European initiatives such as CIVITAS. Partners will build upon all previous results to develop improved delivery methods, tools and methodologies, and implement them across Europe.

EDITO-Model Lab will prepare the next generation of ocean models, complementary to Copernicus Marine Service to be integrated into the EU public infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean [j1] (EDITO) that will ensure access to required input and validation data (from EMODnet, EuroGOOS, ECMWF, Copernicus Services and Sentinels satellite observations) and to high performance and distributed computing facilities (from EuroHPC for High Performance Computing and other cloud computing resources) and that will be consolidated under developments of Destination Earth (DestinE).

Statistical physics shows strong benefits when describing multi-scale complex systems such as: fluid turbulence, climate or neural signals.  In particular, Information Theory exhibits strong potentialities in the study of complex systems due to its power to characterize non-linear behaviors. Moreover in the last years, AI models have been strongly developed to deal with a large number of scientific questions, and more particularly complex systems. Thus, SCALES proposes to combine this IT framework with AI models to characterize interactions among the scales of complex systems.

Despite the introduction of limits on the sulfur content of marine fuels, the contribution of maritime transport to PM 2.5 emissions is estimated to have increased by 45% in the Mediterranean Sea over the period 2006 to 2020. To limit the environmental and health impact of maritime traffic, the International Maritime Organization has imposed regulations to limit polluting emissions, in particular by defining sulphur emission control zones (SECA zone), aiming to target this reduction in port areas, and in areas where maritime traffic is dense near the coastal edges. But particulate and gazeous emissions of ships remain a major health and environmental issue.

In France, the contribution of maritime transport to air pollution appears to be low if we consider conventional emission inventories approaches. On the other hand, this pollution is localized, especially in port areas where ships perform regular maneuvers. Among the pollutants produced by ships, SOx, NOx and fine particles are considered to be the three most problematic pollutants in terms of environmental and health impact. This CAPNAV project supported by ADEME as part of the CORTEA call for proposals aims to better quantify and characterize particulate emissions, particularly in the different phases of ship maneuvering.

Supported by the European Commission to the tune of €5m, COCPIT stands for "scalable solutions optimisation and decision tool creation for low impact SAF production chain from a lIpid-rich microalgae sTrain", 

Innovative processes and bioprocesses

Since the 2010s, microalgae have offered an interesting alternative for producing biofuel for aviation, although the low yields obtained and the compatibility in the energy mix between biofuels and fossil fuels have prompted refiners to turn to other solutions. The aim of the project is therefore to find innovative approaches to reducing the production costs of growing microalgae in photobioreactors, improving processes throughout the chain

This project brings together 10 academic and industrial partners* from 6 different countries:

• IMT Atlantique - GEPEA
• Nantes Université - France
• Universitat Rovira i Virgili - Spain
• Aalborg University - Danemark  
• Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt - German Aerospace Center - Germany
• Agricultural University of Athens - Greece

• AlgoSource technologies - France
• HELLENiQ ENERGY - Germany
• Wings ICT Solutions - Greece
• ETA - Florence Renewable Energies - Italia