Motivated by the great unexplored potential of plasma/catalysis, the goals of PIONEER to achieve efficient technologies for CO2 conversion are the following:
- To gain deeper knowledge on the fundamentals and mechanisms of CO2 plasmas interacting with surfaces and the physicochemical phenomena involved, including CO2 dissociation, to model these phenomena and to be able to predict the behavior and consequences of different CO2 plasmas.
- To invent advanced, active, selective and robust catalytic systems specially formulated for plasma-catalytic coupling to optimize CO2 valorization, and study the interaction between the excited species present in CO2 plasmas and solid catalytic surface.
- To explore innovative routes for plasma-catalyst interaction, study novel reactor designs involving various types of exposure of the catalytic materials to different kinds of plasmas of diverse energy density, to evaluate the influence of these parameters in reaction mechanisms, kinetics and product yield.