CO2 methanation activated by magnetic heating: life cycle assessment and perspectives for successful renewable energy storage

Purpose

Technologies with low environmental impacts and promoting renewable energy sources are required to meet the energetic demand while facing the increase of gas emissions associated to the greenhouse effect and the depletion of fossil fuels. CO₂ methanation activated by magnetic heating has recently been reported as a highly efficient and innovative power-to-gas technology in a perspective of successful renewable energy storage and carbon dioxide valorisation. In this work, the life cycle assessment (LCA) of this process is performed, in order to highlight the environmental potential of the technology, and its competitivity with in respect to conventional heating technologies.

Methods

The IMPACT 2002+ was used for this LCA. The process studied integrates methanation, water electrolysis and CO₂ capture and separation. This “cradle-to-gate” LCA study does not consider the use of methane, which is the reaction product. The functional unit used is the energy content of the produced CH₄. The LCA was carried out using the energy mix data for the years 2020 and 2050 as given by the French Agency for Environment and Energy management (ADEME). Consumption data were either collected from literature or obtained from the LPCNO measurements as discussed by Marbaix (2019). The environmental impact of the CO₂ methanation activated by magnetic heating was compared with the environmental impact of a power-to-gas plant using conventional heating (Helmeth) and considering the environmental impact of the natural gas extraction.

Results

It is shown that the total flow rate of reactants, the source of CO₂ and the energy mix play a major role on the environmental impact of sustainable CH₄ production, whereas the lifetime of the considered catalyst has no significant influence. As a result of the possible improvements on the above-mentioned parameters, the whole process is expected to reduce by 75% in its environmental impact toward 2050. This illustrates the high environmental potential of the methanation activated by magnetic heating when coupled with industrial exhausts and renewable electricity production.

Conclusions

The technology is expected to be environmentally competitive compared with existing similar processes using external heating sources with the additional interest of being extremely dynamic in response, in line with the intermittency of renewable energy production.

     

Mapping Topoisomerase IV Binding and Activity Sites on the E. coli Genome

Catenation links between sister chromatids are formed progressively during DNA replication and are involved in the establishment of sister chromatid cohesion. Topo IV is a bacterial type II topoisomerase involved in the removal of catenation links both behind replication forks and after replication during the final separation of sister chromosomes. We have investigated the global DNA-binding and catalytic activity of Topo IV in E. coli using genomic and molecular biology approaches. ChIP-seq revealed that Topo IV interaction with the E. coli chromosome is controlled by DNA replication. During replication, Topo IV has access to most of the genome but only selects a few hundred specific sites for its activity. Local chromatin and gene expression context influence site selection. Moreover strong DNA-binding and catalytic activities are found at the chromosome dimer resolution site, dif, located opposite the origin of replication. We reveal a physical and functional interaction between Topo IV and the XerCD recombinases acting at the dif site. This interaction is modulated by MatP, a protein involved in the organization of the Ter macrodomain. These results show that Topo IV, XerCD/dif and MatP are part of a network dedicated to the final step of chromosome management during the cell cycle.     

Nα-terminal acetylation of proteins by NatA and NatB serves distinct physiological roles in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

1. Download : Download high-res image (176KB)
2. Download : Download full-size image

     

Reduction of Self-Quenching in Fluorescent Silica-Coated Silver Nanoparticles

This paper reports the development of spherical Ag@SiO₂ nanocomposites in which fluorescein isothiocyanate molecules have been incorporated using a silane coupling agent and a straightforward microemulsion-based synthesis procedure. The photophysical characteristics of core-shell and coreless nanostructures with similar silica shell thickness and fluorophore densities are measured and compared, and show unequivocally that the presence of the silver core decreases the fluorophore lifetime by a factor as high as 4 and that the steady-state fluorescence intensity is increased by a factor as high as 3. The relationship between the enhancement in fluorescence yield and the influence of the silver core on resonance energy transfer processes was examined by fluorescence lifetime and anisotropy measurements. These Ag@SiO₂ core-shell nanoparticles provide higher detectability and lower self-quenching, whereas the faster recycling time offers more robustness toward photobleaching.     

Global stability and optimisation of a general impulsive biological control model

An impulsive model of augmentative biological control consisting of a general continuous predator-prey model in ordinary differential equations, i.e. a meta-model, augmented by a discrete part describing periodic introductions of predators is considered. The existence of an invariant periodic solution that corresponds to prey eradication is shown and a condition ensuring its global asymptotic stability is given. An optimisation problem related to the preemptive use of augmentative biological control is then considered. It is assumed that the per time unit budget of biological control (i.e. the number of predators to be released) is fixed and the best deployment of this budget is sought in terms of release frequency. The cost function to be minimised is the time needed to reduce an unforeseen prey (pest) invasion occurring at a worst time instant under some harmless level. The analysis shows that the optimisation problem admits a countable infinite number of solutions. An argumentation considering the required robustness of the optimisation result with respect to the invasive prey population level and to the model parameters is then conducted. It is shown that the cost function is decreasing in the predator release frequency so that the best deployment of the biocontrol agents is to carry out as frequent introductions as possible.