The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University

Published purpose

Novel technologies are being developed to harvest energy from renewable sources, but enormous challenges remain. The intermittency of renewable energy sources, the disruption of vastly-deployed fossil fuel based infrastructures and value chains, the heavy reliance on rare and/or conflict elements, closing the loop on carbon, the drastic process intensification required for distributed power generation, and the need for alternative energy-dense carbon-free fuels for long-haul transportation, are only a few challenges in key sectors of the economy. Electric plasma sources and processes offer novel and scalable avenues for the transition, as they offer drastically greener paths to material and energy resource extraction, synthesis, conversion, recycling and utilization. Plasma-catalytic processes, which combine the unique processing conditions of the plasma with the accelerated chemical kinetics attributable to the catalyst, offer great promises to displace large-scale industrial processes, such as ammonia synthesis, nitrogen fixation and syngas production, and to introduce novel processes. The project will build upon NRC’s expertise to synthesize nanocatalyst supports, namely plasma-synthesized boron nitride nanotubes, and PPL’s expertise in plasma-catalysis, to synthesize novel BNNT-based catalysts and develop scalable plasma sources and processes, specifically aimed at ammonia synthesis and dry reforming of methane.