Laboratory of Environmental Fuels and Hydrocarbons (LEFH), Chemical Process & Energy Resources Institute (CPERI), Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH)

The Laboratory of Environmental Fuels and Hydrocarbons (LEFH) is one of the 6 laboratories of the Chemical Process & Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) in Thessaloniki. LEFH is one of the founding laboratories of CPERI and has multiyear expertise in the development of catalysts and processes for various applications. Fields of interest include the production of clean fossil fuels through innovative and optimized catalytic refinery processes, the conversion of natural gas to syngas and hydrogen, the thermochemical conversion of biomass for the production of fuels and chemicals and environmental technologies for flue gas cleaning (deSOx-deNOx). During the last decade, LEFH has developed significant expertise in synthesis, characterization and evaluation of metal-based oxide/carbide catalysts for the hydrogenation of CO and CO₂ to fuels and high added-value chemical products. The experience of LEFH is manifested by participation in numerous relevant EU and national projects over the past decade. Results of relevant work have also been published in high-impact scientific journals and have been presented in international, European and national conferences.

Contribution to the project

The activities of LEFH focus on the conversion of CO₂ to high added-value products, and specifically to methanol. The innovative process of sorption-enhanced CO₂ hydrogenation in the presence of a solid sorbent for the continuous removal of the water produced from the reaction, and thus the alleviation of the thermodynamic limitations, is studied in order to achieve high CO₂ conversion and high methanol yield. The specific research goals are to find identify suitable water sorbents with adequate sorption capacity at high water partial pressures under the conditions of the reaction and to develop active methanol synthesis catalysts based on transition metal carbides with high stability over multiple reaction/regeneration cycles. These materials will be evaluated in the CO₂ hydrogenation reaction to methanol in the presence and absence of sorbent in high pressure laboratory and pilot scale units in order to optimize the operation conditions and evaluate the catalysts’ activity and stability under realistic conditions for industrial application.