Doctoral theses

The impact of climate change and human activities on the water resource evolution is today a major concern for our societies. Managing karst aquifers requires an in-depth understanding of hydrodynamic flows, considering the heterogeneity of the geological reservoir.

Because of their very low polarity, carbon-hydrogen (C-H) bonds are particularly difficult to activate. However, their ubiquity in organic molecules makes their activation and functionalization particularly interesting.

The aeronautics sector must rapidly evolve to further improve aircraft energy efficiency. This involves the evolution of fluids, the modification of system architectures and, of course, the optimization of these two items to ensure a safe operation. The degradation of aeronautical oils is one topic that has to be addressed.

The study of processes such as CO2 injection in the underground or geothermal energy requires to simulate flows and geomechanics in cracked porous media in a coupled way. Cracks have a major influence on the hydraulic conductivity since they can be highly permeable.

The Li-ion battery is the technology shared by all automakers to provide the energy storage required for the deployment of electrified vehicles. During its life cycle, a battery may encounter a wide range of operating conditions.

Adapting applications to take full advantage of exascale supercomputers, including accelerators such as GPUs, is a major challenge, requiring significant changes to application codes.

The use of biomass is a promising alternative for the synthesis of various families of high value-added chemicals, which can be used for the synthesis of new products.

IFPEN conducts research to optimize biotechnological processes in the field of bio-based chemistry and biofuels. A significant part of these improvements is based on a better understanding of the microorganisms used with the help of systems biology.

Catastrophic floods and sustained droughts will be increasing according to the IPCC 2018 report. It is uncertain how this change will impact flow pathways and sediment yield within the watersheds of major rivers during hydrological extremes.

The use of biomass/biomass residues as feedstocks for bioenergy and biofuel processes is of rising interest for climate change mitigation. Thermochemical conversion of biomass in fluidized bed reactors, through pyrolysis, gasification, and combustion, requires efficient feedstock penetration and mixing through reliable feed injection systems.

Plastics recycling through chemical recycling routes has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years, to cope with complex plastics streams not handled by classical industrial mechanical recycling routes.

Detecting gaseous emissions from either industrial storage sites or natural environments is a major challenge when it comes to controlling harmful emissions and greenhouse gases.