LEMTA was one of the first laboratories to be awarded the Carnot label in 2007. Carnot Icéel met Pascal Boulet, LEMTA director, to review the laboratory’s partnership research activities. Discover in this article the main orientations of the laboratory in terms of R&D and the services it can offer to companies to accompany them in the energy transition.
Pascal Boulet is an important player in Icel on the themes of energy and energy transition. Can you tell us more about your laboratory’s strategy for these research activities?
LEMTA has nearly 50 years of existence and experience in the field of mechanics and transfers. Energy has always been at the heart of our applications, but for the last ten years or so our strategy has been very resolutely oriented towards energy and the energy transition. For us, this is a privileged field of research and applications. We make the most of our historical skills in the fields of fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, soil mechanics, thermal engineering, electrochemical systems and electrical engineering. We combine these areas of expertise to meet the major challenges set by research agencies in the field of energy management and low-carbon energy, and to provide solutions to the research and development problems of our industrial partners, whether they are energy producers or consumers. LEMTA is particularly well known for its experimental facilities and the skills of its researchers in measuring, analysing and optimising the properties of materials and systems.
The topics that LEMTA researchers deal with on a daily basis are highly sought after in the innovation market. What can you offer in terms of R&D to companies wishing to remove a technological barrier by using the skills of your laboratory?
We have R&D partnerships at various levels, from one-off research studies carried out on a contract basis, to the multi-year programmes that we are conducting, for example, as part of our joint laboratory with Saint Gobain Recherche, or the framework cooperation agreements with the CSTB, the INRS or the Société du Grand Paris.
One of our strengths is our ability to set up customised experimental benches to characterise materials or to understand and quantify transfer phenomena in a system. The applications we deal with concern in particular transport, energy production and distribution, construction and nuclear safety.
We are in the process of obtaining the Star-LUE label for our metrology platform Métro’NRJ. With our 9 complementary technical platforms, we can respond to requests in the field of thermal, optical, electrical, electrochemical and mechanical properties, for applications ranging from media and materials (soils, polymers, wood, construction materials) to systems (fuel cells, exchangers, energy microgrids, etc.).
Our examples of achievements are very varied: characterising refractory materials at high temperatures, testing fire protection devices in tunnels or on ships, characterising flows in opaque systems that are inaccessible to traditional optical measurements, evaluating the life of fuel cell type systems and helping to improve them. When the technical solution to be provided has to be “invented”, our researchers also know how to innovate and propose breakthrough solutions: compressing hydrogen to 700bars without mechanical compression, driving micro-grids in on-board systems, combining phase change materials and porous materials to store thermal energy, etc. We provide support in fundamental research on energy control or management problems, but also regularly contribute to the design of pilot installations or prototypes.
Since 2020, LEMTA has been working closely with Saint-Gobain Research as part of the Canopée labcom, dedicated to the study of materials and systems under extreme temperature conditions. This type of collaboration marks your commitment to partnership research. Can you tell us about your vision of research serving the development of all companies?
The joint laboratory CANOPEE (“enjeu CArbone: matériaux inNOvants pour des Procédés Economes en Energie”) sets a framework for our partnership with Saint Gobain Recherche. Its objective is to contribute to the design and characterisation of materials and systems under extreme temperature conditions. The expected result is to reduce the carbon footprint of high temperature manufacturing processes. In concrete terms, we bring our skills in heat transfer and apply them from the material scale to the industrial installation scale. We are developing precise methods for measuring, under extreme conditions, the properties of materials and the quantities characterising the processes.
This is a typical project for collaborations built by LEMTA: an industrial partner faces a challenge in a field related to energy, and LEMTA provides its characterisation resources, its expertise and its R&D support. We work with the dual objective of producing knowledge and providing innovative technical solutions. It is a win/win partnership that ultimately allows our industrial collaborators to surpass the challenges that are posed to them and to innovate.
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