Institute for Energy Technology (IFE)

IFE is an independent, non-profit, private research organisation founded in 1948 with primary location at Kjeller, Norway. With an annual turnover of approximately 100 M€, and about 600 employees, IFE conducts leading research at both national and international level – having been involved in more than 300 international projects in the following areas: renewable energy, environmental technology, physics and materials science, marine technology, nuclear technology, safety and reliability, and man-machine systems. IFE is certified by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) with ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004. Since 2009, IFE has proudly hosted three of Norway’s Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research (FME), funded by the Norwegian Research Council, within the topics of solar energy (two centres) and zero emission transportation (hydrogen & batteries).

In the past 15 years, the department of Environmental Industrial Processes has been working in several national and international projects in the field of power and hydrogen production with integrated CO2 capture, with a special focus on the development of sorption-enhanced processes, novel high temperature CO2 solid sorbents and novel oxygen carriers for chemical looping processes. The research group in the department has expertise in process intensification, gas-solid catalytic and non-catalytic reactions, advanced material science, fluidized bed reactor technology and process modelling.

IFE’s website

IFE’s role in CONVERGE

IFE will lead WP3 “Valorization: SER and EHC development” in close collaboration with HyET. IFE will be responsible for the development and validation of the SER technology adapted to the CONVERGE concept and will also be responsible for the integration and test of the SER and EHC technology. IFE’s R&D activities will focus on the further development of CO2 sorbent and catalyst materials previously developed at IFE and through the FP7 ASCENT project (GA 608512), with the objective to optimize their performance for the CONVERGE SER feedstock. Laboratory scale SER tests in relevant process conditions as well as process modelling will be carried out to pre-validate the materials and optimize the SER process parameters. A second main task of the work package will concern the integration and test of the SER and EHC processes at the IFE-HyNor Hydrogen Technology Centre. IFE will take care of the design, engineering and installation of the integration in collaboration with HyET. The validation of the technical SER-EHC integration will be carried out by IFE and HyET.

In WP5 “Socio-Techno Economics”, IFE will provide material and process data for the system design, life cycle analysis, and techno-economics analysis.

As main developer of the SER technology, IFE will participate in the development of business cases in WP6 “Business-case and Supply Chain Economics”.

IFE will also participate to the dissemination of the project results in WP1 “Management & Dissemination”, and will be responsible for the risk management of the project.

We are IFE

Julien Meyer is working as a senior research scientist at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in the Department of Environmental Industrial Processes and leads the group Process Intensification. He holds a Master Degree of Advanced Studies in Environmental Technology and Industrial Safety from the University of Grenoble, France (1996). In the past 18 years employed at IFE, he has worked in the field of hydrogen production and CO2-capture, and more specifically in the development of the Sorption-Enhanced Reforming (SER) and Calcium-Looping (CaL) technologies. He has experience as project manager and technical responsible/adviser for several national and international research projects in the field of power and/or hydrogen production with integrated CO2 capture. His fields of expertise are related to process intensification, high temperature solid CO2 sorbents, high temperature solid cycles, packed and fluidized bed reactor technology, material processing and process technology.