We are a research group under the direction of  CNRS Research Director Andrei Khodakov, CNRS Research Associate Vitaly Ordomsky and Associate Professor Mirella Virginie in the UCCS CNRS laboratory in the University of Lille and Centrale Lille. 
We are fascinated by Catalysis, which is a very important natural phenomenon that is located at the crossroads of many scientific disciplines such as chemistry, physics, materials science, spectroscopy, quantum mechanics, engineering and economics.

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Catalysis has  an extremely broad  impact on our lives. Almost all the materials with which we deal in our everyday life, are created with catalysts. Catalysts and catalytic processes account for nearly 85% of all processes in chemical industry.

 As all our Human Society, Catalysis, since its discovery in 1836 by Berzelius, has had various stages in history. In recent years, we have entered a new period in the history of Catalysis, this period is called Sustainable Catalysis.

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Sustainable Catalysis is  characterized by :

• new alterative feedstocks,  such as non-conventional gas, carbon dioxide, organic and industrial waste,  biomass,

•development of photo-catalysis, electro-catalysis and hybrid catalysis,

• shift from commodities to specialties

• growing role of modeling and simulations including Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

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The goal of all our scientific projects is to create and understand new catalysts and their performance in chemical reactions and processes in the fields of Sustainable Catalysis.

 

We believe that creativity, dedication and selfless work and exchange of scientific ideas, opinions and views are indispensable conditions that will make it possible a breakthrough in Sustainable Catalysis and solve many economic, social and environmental problems that Human Society faces in the Present and will have to handle in the Future.

 

The focus of our research lies at the development of new catalytic materials and processes for application in alternative energy generation and renewable chemicals.  We specifically focus in the field of design of novel heterogeneous catalysts for C1 chemistry (methane, carbon dioxide, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis) and biomass transformation using new synthetic, spectroscopic, and reaction engineering tools to study the chemical transformation of molecules on catalytic surfaces. We are developing in collaboration with several research groups, transient kinetic methods, isotopic labeling including SSITKA  and in-situ and operando spectroscopic techniques.