Consortium

Dr. Vanesa Gil, ARAID Senior Researcher and Head of R&D Department at FHA is responsible for bringing novel and disruptive technologies from components research to full integration, addressing proof-of-concepts (TRL 3) and validation at pilot scale and relevant environment (TRL 4-5).

Dr. Gil scientific career is focused on optimizing energy conversion and storage technologies from low to high temperature. Research areas of interest are production of alternative fuels (including hydrogen), renewable fuels applications and H₂ injection into gas grid.

Dr. Vanesa Gil is the overall scientific coordinator of 4AirCRAFT. As a material scientist she will oversee the electrochemical, nanocatalyst and advanced materials improvements along the cascade reactor design and manufacturing.

Dr. Javier Sánchez-Laínez, researcher engineer at Aragon Hydrogen Foundation is a key member of Gil’s team. He possesses extensive background in metal-organic materials chemistry and materials synthesis and functionalisation. Additionally, he holds an award as the best doctoral thesis in CO₂ capture technologies from PTE CO₂ (Spain).

Prof. Dr. Kiyoharu Tadanaga is a Professor of Inorganic Synthesis Chemistry Laboratory in Hokkaido University. Tadanaga`s expertise is preparation of functional inorganic materials using solution processes, and developed materials for optical, electronical, and electrochemical devices.

He has been studying polymer electrolyte-type fuel cells using organic-inorganic hybrid proton conductors, and alkaline-type fuel cells using inorganic hydroxide-ion conductive materials. He has also developed oxygen-reduction reaction (ORR) or oxygen-evolution reaction (OER) catalysts based of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) that can be used for fuel cells and metal-air batteries, and electrochemical oxygen separation.

Prof. Tadanaga is leading the work package focused on the development and characterization of novel catalyst.

Prof. Tadanaga’s group will be in charge of developing novel electrocatalyst for the 4AirCRAFT disruptive reactor technology.

Dr. Nataly Carolina Rosero-Navarro, Assistant Professor at the Hokkaido University and key member of Tadanaga research group is co-leader of workpackage. She has implemented novel soft chemical routes to prepare protonic hybrid membranes, sulfide and oxide solid electrolytes, materials for electrode/electrolyte interfaces and composites electrodes for all-solid-state batteries and, electrocatalysts for fuel cells and metal-air batteries providing new insights and concepts for the improvement of energy generation and storages.

Her long-term goal includes the design and synthesis of inorganic and hybrid materials for the next “green” energy generation and storage.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Wuttke is Ikerbasque Professor researcher at BCM. He is interested on aspects of internal and external surface engineering of porous hybrid bulk- and nanomaterials and in the exploitation of the unexpressed potential of "the materials beyond" (materials with multiple functional moieties that display synergetic effects). His research is focused on the synthesis and characterization of multifunctional colloidal metal-organic framework (MOF) nanoparticles as powerful therapeutic and/or diagnostic agents in areas such as drug delivery and medical imaging.

Prof. Wuttke leads the work package focused on the development of advanced catalyst carriers. His group will deal with the development of MOFs as advanced catalyst carriers. MOFs will be encoded with diverse catalytic activities and will be used to encapsulate inorganic and biocatalysts in order to increase their catalytic robustness under harsh conditions. The precise control over the pore space of the MOFs (i.e. size, shape and surface chemistry) offers uncountable opportunities to shield the core catalysts and even create synergistic interactions that will be explored within 4AirCRAFT.

Dr. Roberto Fernández de Luis, research associate at BCM and key member of Prof. Wuttke’s group, focuses his activity on the development of metal-organic frameworks as environmental monitoring, separation and remediation systems.

Prof. Dr. Gröger leads work package dealing with the development of suitable biocatalysts and their use in efficient biotransformation processes as well as the combination of such enzymes with chemocatalytic reactions towards an efficient conversion of carbon dioxide into air fuels.

Dr. Jonas Gurauskis ARAID Senior Researcher at Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA) is the principal investigator from CSIC. Jonas Gurauskis has extended background in processing hierarchical structures, advanced manufacturing and scaling-up of functional materials (solid oxide materials, inorganic/organic hybrid compounds).

Key technology areas within high and low temperature energy conversion devices and biotechnology field are membrane reactors, fuel cells, microbial systems, etc. Dr. Gurauskis leads work package focused on the validation of the novel technology, including the rational design and assembly of the game-changer cascade reactor.

Advanced catalyst carriers will be designed and developed by Gurauskis’ group with the most promising electro-, bio- and chemo-catalyst and sized to form continuous cascade reactor.

Dr. Mario Aparicio (see picture) is senior scientist at ICV. He has considerable experience in the design, processing (wet-soft chemistry) and characterisation of inorganic and inorganic-organic hybrid materials for Proton Exchange membranes fuel cells (PEMFC), metal-ion batteries, metal-air batteries and corrosion protection of metals.

Dr. Aparicio’s group will contribute in 4AirCRAFT to the development by wet-soft chemistry of advanced electrocatalyst.

Prof. Dr. Pedro Camargo is professor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Chemistry. His research interests include the synthesis of nanomaterials for nanocatalysis and plasmonic nanocatalysis. Camargo’s team is working towards the development of rational design of inorganic nanocatalysts for the synthesis of long-chain hydrocarbons.

Camargo leads the research activities dealing with the design-driven development of nano chemo-catalysts with controlled physical and chemical features such as size, shape, surface composition enabling the optimization of performance, but also unravel structure-performance relationships.

Prof. Dr. Joke Hadermann is a Physics professor from the EMAT group with expertise in TEM, including advanced imaging techniques and 3D-ED.

Her main interests include the evolution of crystal structures during electrochemical and gas-solid reactions. EMAT’s role in the project is to reveal crystallographic, morphological and compositional information on the materials using ex situ and in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

Stefano Canossa has been involved in the project since its conception and joined the consortium as Univ. Antwerpen staff. In January 2022 he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Germany) as postdoctoral researcher. His research focuses on crystal and local structure analysis of MOFs and COFs by single-crystal X-ray and electron diffraction.

Dr. Francesca Carla Bonino, Associate Professor in Physical Chemistry in UNITO is an expert in spectroscopic characterization of porous materials (zeolites and MOFs) in different in situ and operando conditions (in presence of both gas and liquids).

Prof. Dr. Reinaldo Giudici is Full Professor at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (POLI-USP) and currently also deputy director of POLI-USP. He holds a Senior Researcher Fellowship (level 1A) of the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq).

His main research interests are: chemical reaction engineering, polymer reaction engineering, kinetics, mathematical modeling, simulation and optimization of chemical processes, online monitoring of chemical processes.

Prof. Giudici’s research group as a member of Research Centre for Gas innovation (RCGI) leads the characterization and performance evaluation of catalysts as well as kinetic modelling of the processes and simulation of integrated/intensified processes.