Research project

The scientific project carried out by the Chair is at the intersection of the disciplinary fields of process and material sciences involving the use of supercritical fluids. It will allow the development of studies which will aim at :

– Intensifying the adequacy between the process and the material by improving the process efficiency. It can be achieved by integrating several functions in a single operation and by reducing the consumption of inputs (monomers, additives, catalysts…). The idea is to optimize the physico-chemical properties and/or reactive systems by supercritical fluids as reagents or carrier fluids to provide new functions or as plasticizers to transform heat-sensitive materials such as biobased polymers.

– Making the use of polymeric materials safer in order to increase their recycling towards currently unthinkable applications by achieving total clean-up/purification: offering ultra-pure virgin or recycled polymers,

– Continuously generating materials with properties that are different from those currently proposed: high-performance materials, nano-cellular polymer foams or polymer blends with controlled morphologies.

The deployment of the scientific project relies on a base of existing projects currently composed of 3 PhD on recycling and 4 projects on the purification and development of cellular materials. As soon as he/she is recruited, the person hired will be integrated into the follow-up of the projects. He/she will also supervise the doctoral and post-doctoral students recruited. They will be assigned to the development of the coupling of fluids under supercritical conditions and polymer processing and, more particularly, they will endeavour to associate conceptual aspects at different scales and states of matter with the experimental part (constitutive laws and scaling laws for complex polymer/supercritical fluids under strong flows, fundamental mechanisms involved in the elaboration of nano-foams assisted by supercritical fluids, understanding of the clean-up processes integrated in a recycling operation).

The overall budget allocated to the project amounts to 650000 € including salaries.

Contacts   Head of the lab : Pr Jean-Charles Majesté, majeste@univ-st-etienne.fr

Host laboratory:

The Laboratory « Ingénierie des Matériaux Polymères » (UMR CNRS 5223) is a research unit (70 senior scientists /130 Ph-D and postdocs) which focuses on polymer materials, affiliated to CNRS, University of Lyon, INSA and to University Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne). The laboratory has included in its roadmap the development of cross-disciplinary skills related to major societal challenges in both energy and environmental aspects, including an approach to the development of materials with a virtuous life cycle. The person recruited at the Saint-Etienne site will be able to rely on the laboratory’s platform “FlusCritex” (unique in Europe) dedicated to the coupling of fluids under supercritical conditions and polymer processing. The development of this coupling approach requires the association of conceptual aspects at different scales and states of matter in addition to the experimental component. This conceptualization approach is an important research axis in the laboratory.