IPFN and CQE join Horizon Europe project CANMILK
A multidisciplinary team involving the N-PRiME team of IPFN and the CATHPRO and MET teams of IST's Center for Structural Chemistry (CQE) has joined project CANMILK (CArbon Neutral MILK) under the competitive Horizon Europe Hop-on facility. The team convened at the Department of Physics at IST on the 24th October to celebrate the beginning of this partnership.
The CANMILK consortium is led by project coordinator VTT in Finland and is now formed by 8 partners from 6 European countries. Vasco Guerra (N-PRiME/IPFN) is the PI at IST and relies on Pedro Viegas (N-PRiME/IPFN), Carmen Bacariza (CATHPRO/CQE) and Karina Shimizu (MET/CQE) as task leaders.
CANMILK aims to develop a new, innovative technology based on non-thermal plasma to achieve greener milk production. Its ambitious goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture with a simple, efficient, and cost-effective equipment for methane abatement at dairy and meat farms. Methane will be converted to carbon dioxide, which is a much less harmful compound with 28 times lower global warming potential than methane.
Agriculture accounts for about 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions at the European level. A significant proportion of these (around 54%) is methane, most of which is produced by rumination and belching by cattle. Currently, there is no suitable way to treat dilute methane in animal barns. In order to reduce methane emissions quickly and reach carbon neutrality by 2035, new technical solutions must be efficient, have a high potential for fast commercialization, and have investment and operation costs that are affordable for the farmers.
The novelty of the project is to synergistically combine plasma technology and catalysis, benefiting from their individual advantages and circumventing their drawbacks, to develop an energy efficient method for the abatement of highly dilute methane. The IST team will utilize both their modelling and experimental expertise and focus on the key question of what happens on the direct interface of plasma and catalyst and on the role of plasma-activated species and the catalytic activity at this interface. The understanding of the radical transfer from plasma to the catalyst will greatly improve the design of the CANMILK technology.
