Cold Plasmas in the Fight Against Global Warming

Successful fight against global warming cannot be achieved without the massive development of alternative carbon-free energies. Clean electricity can already be produced from fuel cells or wind energy, but in the transport industry liquid fuels have no real substitute yet. Our project is to address this issue by producing liquid fuels with cold plasmas. Plasmas are highly reactive media than can dissociate or create new species. We use them to dissociate CO2, the byproduct of liquid fuel combustion, instead of rejecting it into the environment. We produce CO, which can be added to hydrogen to form synthetic gas, a valuable product converted into liquid fuels again, resulting in a zero-emission cycle. The Stanford Plasma Physics Lab (SPPL) and the Non-Equilibrium Plasma Group at Ecole Centrale Paris are involved in this project. We use their complementary expertise in the production methods of cold plasmas and in advanced optical diagnostics to better understand the mechanisms of the dissociation of CO2 with plasmas. Plasmas are also applied to other fields: The project encompasses collaboration with the Stanford School of Medicine to use the reactive properties of the cold plasmas developed at Ecole Centrale Paris in ambient air, for the biodecontamination of living organisms.