Lesgo’s first step
One of the key issues to reduce the traditional use of fossil fuel as energy sources is to efficiently store solar energy obtained from solar panels. Many platforms have been investigated over the year and currently, hydrogen is being pursued as a promising route to store this energy. Now, due to the fact that over 95% of H2 produced comes from breaking the C-H bond in hydrocarbons, storing Hydrogen bound to Carbon atoms may provide a long-term solution to this issue.
Common liquid hydrocarbons are not an optimal solution since extracting H from them involves CO2 emissions. With that matter in mind, the Lesgo project has proposed using graphene to store hydrogen as effectively as possible, by binding it to the carbon in reduced graphene oxide, a green and clean material that in the entire process does not generate CO2 emissions.
Storing energy in hydrogen is not an easy task to achieve. This is why Lesgo gathers 10 partners from 6 different countries based on their knowledge and expertise in the field. Lesgo also sets a stone towards gender parity, having 57% of the work packages led by females and approaching the 50% of female participants in the project.
The kick-off meeting
The meeting began with an overall presentation by the project coordinator, Prof. Jordi Martorell, and project manager, Lucia Sanz, who introduced all partners and explained what ICFO’s contribution will be within the project, their objectives and tasks.
Dr. Beatriz Alonso from Graphenea gave a short presentation of the company and explained, as a producer of graphene, how the synthesis of this material will be achieved for this approach. Prof. Bilal Gökce from the Duissburg Essen University showed how his team will focus on increasing the productivity of the process to industry applications, in particular for electrocatalysts, which will be characterized by the team of Dr. Tanja Kallio from Aalto University. Dr. Nina Carretero from IREC gave an overview of their involvement in several fields and their lead in the electrodes and catalytic configuration, focusing also on the hydrogenation of synthesized graphene oxide provided by Graphenea.
The contribution of the Hysytech partner was explained by Sorani Montenegro, who will develop the prototype and perform the economic and technical analyses. Then, Dr. Valentina Tozzini from CNR- Nano explained how they will be contributing to the project by performing multi-scale modelling and simulations of the processes involved in hydrogen storage.
Gennadi Finkelshtein from Gencell company, presented their work and participation in Lesgo, which will be leading the synthesis and providing of materials, the development of test benches and experimental studies. The CRF contribution was presented by Mauro Sgroi, which explained how the organization will be responsible for the modelling of the reactions among others.
Finally, Lucas Larsen from the Danish Board of Technology presented their organization as responsible for the creation of an innovation ecosystem, integrating the exploitation and disseminating the contents.
The kick-off meeting finished with the presentations of the Exploitation and Communications actions carried out, respectively, by the Knowledge and Technology Transfer unit (KTT) and the Communications unit at ICFO. A short technical meeting followed the talks, where partners discussed more concrete and technical aspects of the project.
The partners
Lesgo includes several research organizations and industry partners. With the aim of creating a technology that will be effectively deployed in the market, the teams are integrated by members of several disciplines and backgrounds.
The partners include ICFO- Institute of Photonic Sciences, the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC), and Graphenea in Spain; the University of Duissburg-Essen in Germany; the Aalto University in Finland; the CNR-Nano National Research Center and the Centro Ricerche Fiat (CRF) in Italy; Hysytech in The Netherlands; Gencell in Israel, and the Danish Board of Technology in Denmark.
