Polyethylene is by far the most significant polymer worldwide in terms of volume of production, and demand for this product continues to rise. The size of the market and increasing demand means that producers need to increase capacity either by improving existing processes, or building newer, more efficient processes. For gas phase processes which represent nearly 50% of all production processes, fluidized bed reactors are the equipment of choice at the industrial scale, where the polymer is grown in the form of particles suspended in a flowing gas stream. One of the major operational issues associated with increasing capacity in gas phase reactors is the ability to remove the significant amount of heat produced during the reaction. On the one hand, one needs to avoid dangerous overheating of the reactor, and on the other hand it is necessary to have precise temperature control in order to maintain the quality of the polymer in terms of molecular weight and particle size, minimizing particle aggregation and sintering. A popular approach to control overheating is the so-called “condensed operating mode” where liquid species are injected together with the monomer feed. The temperature and composition of the feed are chosen so the feed is below its dew point, which in turn is below the reactor temperature. Upon entering the reactor the liquefied components vaporize and the latent heat of evaporation helps to cool the system. However, it has recently been demonstrated that the inert species most typically used for this purpose can strongly influence the solubility of all species in the growing polymer particles, and since they also act as plasticizers they can also impact the physical properties of the particles. Despite the wide-spread use of condensed mode cooling, very little is understood about the impact of the inerts on the reaction rate, molecular weight distribution, particle morphology and particle agglomeration. The aim of this project is therefore to develop a fundamental understanding of the different phenomena observed during condensed mode cooling in ethylene polymerization, and translate this new knowledge into a sophisticated model able to predict the reactor performance. Accordingly, the project is organized into three subsequent tasks covering the different scales typical of the system, from the single particle to the reactor. Namely, the equilibrium partitioning of different species (monomer, comonomers, solvents, inerts) into polyethylene films and particles will be studied experimentally using different techniques. Then, such thermodynamic knowledge will be incorporated into a single-particle model accounting for the reaction and diffusion phenomena as well as the thermal behavior. Such model will be validated by comparison with experimental data obtained using specially designed spherical stirred bed reactors that are well adapted for gas phase polymerization. Finally, taking advantage of computational efficient methods, a comprehensive model of stirred-bed reactor will be developed, accounting for all phenomena affecting the particle size distribution, such as aggregation due to polymer softening related to the plasticization induced by additional species. The model will be validated by experimental data collected in the same type of stirred bed reactor mentioned above. Such detailed model is expected to become a key tool for the design of intrinsically safer, more efficient reaction modes while ensuring precise polymer quality control.

Chemical warfare agents (CWA) such as the nerve agent VX (organophosphorous OPCs) and the vesicant sulfur mustard (organochlorines OCCs), have been used recently in conflicts, but also in terrorist acts targeting civilian. Liquids or droplet aerosol forms of CWA can be absorbed through the skin, but also by many other organs such as the eyes, or the respiratory tract if there is no sufficient protection of the body surface. The first signs of percutaneous intoxication appear quickly in the form of severe functional disturbances at respiratory, cardiovascular, muscular, pupilar, digestive levels for OPCs and blistering of the skin followed by deep ulcerations for OCCs. These disturbances can lead at last to death. Body surface decontamination is therefore crucial to prevent victims poisoning. It reduces the amount of contaminant on the skin surface and thus, decreases the penetration rate and the extent of intoxication. Different decontaminant systems are currently available for skin decontamination. Some systems act by adsorption and displacement of the toxic agent such as Fuller’s Earth (FE) and other systems act by neutralization (chemical degradation) such as the Canadian Reactive Skin Decontaminant Lotion (RSDL). However, these procedures do not eliminate the toxic contaminant, which may disqualify them for use in enclosed spaces and in cases where the waste disposal cannot be ensured. Chemical procedures decompose or convert toxic substances to non-toxic or less toxic products. Generally, the reagents are suitable for a specific group of contaminants (a few are universal). Because of the shortcomings of all current decontamination methods advances in technology are necessary to increase the effectiveness of decontamination methods towards several toxic agents. The aim of the project will be to develop a universal product efficient against several CWAs, easy to handle and lost cost. New types of decontamination agents such as nanocrystalline metal oxides have been recently introduced that exhibit adsorption but also an ability to typically degrade hazardous chemicals and CWAs. The application of cerium oxide, the most abundant rare earth, has been rarely mentioned in literature but it is efficient against CWA simulants even if the mechanisms are not elucidated. Nanoparticles with specific habits and controlled granulometric distribution and non-aggregated will be designed by two main methods: Pulse Laser Ablation in Liquids and Solvothermal Synthesis Process. Both methods allow tuning the habits of particles. The main objective of this part is to correlate the physicochemical properties of particles to their degradation efficiency. Then, new materials will be designed and finally formulated. The in vitro efficiency of particles to degrade OPCs and OCCs simulants will be ranked. Finally the decontamination efficiency of the better formulations will be tested on skin explants according to the AFNOR guideline to lead to a prototype and a proof-of-concept.

The UMN proposal aims at re-enforcing the existing network initiated by the «Unfold Mechanics for Sounds and Music» colloquium organized at IRCAM in September 2014. Since then, some experts have agreed to enhance the quality of the consortium (see members below) and an international committee have also been contacted by the coordination in order to facilitate the access to the European funding programmes (Horizon 2020, FET). With the High Performance Computing (HPC) challenge in mind, this European scientific network will use the MRSEI ANR instrument to organize research addressing geometric methods (in a broad sense) in mechanics and control theory. Geometric methods for designing structurally sound algorithms and simulation will be investigated along two key directions: symmetry and modularity. The first direction yields the celebrated Noether’s theorem which relates the symmetries to the existence of conserved quantities. This often allows for considerable reductions and divides the computational complexity by several orders of magnitude. On the other hand, dealing with “multibody systems” involving interface connections, the port Hamiltonian approach is particularly well suited. It goes without saying that modularity and its associated symmetries may drastically reduce the computational times, and also, minimize data movement in extreme computing and boost parallelism of simulation codes. Based on a pre-existing team of multidisciplinary eminent experts, the UMN network is now consolidated by an HPC platform (ICS) and an industrial partner (THALES). The MRSEI instrument will help to make mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists and leaders in the industry cooperate to ensure European leadership in the supply and use of HPC systems and services by 2020.

LimICos is an interdisciplinary project proposal at the frontier of control theory, information theory, and digital communications. The objective of this project is to know to what extent controlled systems are impacted by imperfections due to communication between devices; the main part of the proposal is dedicated to the point-to-point scenario, which typically involves one controller and one plant in communication but the case of networked controlled system is also investigated. One of the main goals of LimICos is to model these imperfections (which imply information constraints on the system under consideration) and take them into account both in the performance analysis and design of controlled systems. Although the literature on control contains some preliminary works into this direction, there is a huge space for innovation and disruptive concepts as advocated by the content of this proposal, which comprises four specific tasks. • Modeling of information constraints. One of our goals here is to model typical communication stages such as the source coder (which typically includes a non-linear quantization stage), the channel coder (including error correction mechanisms and protocols), the communication channel, and the dual stages at the receiver. We want to model the imperfections of these stages and employ new hybrid continuous/discrete formalisms. Additionally, a deepened technical discussion will be conducted on the relevant performance indices to be considered (control theorists and engineers consider performance indices like H2, Hinfinty while communication theorists and engineers consider criteria like distortion or packet error rate). • Analysis of the effect of information constraints on performance. Based on classical control laws for continuous-time systems, one of the key points is to assess the performance of these control or observation schemes subject to information constraints. The focus will be on a point-to-point communication between a controller and a plant but the important case of distributed networks will also be studied by exploiting recent and surprising connections between performance analysis of control dynamic games and network information theory. • Robust control design methods with respect to information constraints. Starting from given features of the network, we aim at developing control and estimation algorithms that are robust with respect to information constraints. In this approach, we suggest to keep in mind these constraints when analyzing the performance, when observing a part of the state, and when designing a control loop. Hence, these new robust strategies should be based on the new indices developed in the first part of the project. An interesting way of study could be to adapt the anti-windup strategy, used classically to alleviate the bad effect due to nonlinearities such as saturations, to mitigate the effect of the phenomena related to limited information. In that case, an additional loop would be incorporated to decrease the potential degradation of the performance due to the introduction of low capacity communication channels. In the case of distributed networks, the goal will be to design control strategies whose performance are reasonably close to the performance limits derived in the second task of the project. • Co-design control and communication schemes. The control design and observation architectures take into account both the control objectives and the design of communication protocols at the same level. The information algorithms adapt themselves in time (adaptive sampling…), in quality and/or quantity (adaptive quantization) with respect to the quality of the network and to the control and observation objectives. In particular, we will also try to design a source coder which compresses control-theoretic quantities such as a system state. This evolution law-driven signal compressor corresponds to a completely new approach of source coding.

Continuous processes based on Structured Catalytic Supports (SCS) are widely used in industry. Indeed this type of support allows an important surface over volume ratio, a small pressure loss, efficient mass transfers, an intimate mixing of the reagents, and an easy separation of the products from the catalyst. Among the variety of SCS, open cell foams are prime candidates, which fulfill all these features. Of ceramic or metallic constitution, these host architectures are ideal supports for metallic particles. The preparation of these foams however requires several steps, and the physisorption of metallic particles a thermic treatment at very high temperature. This expensive and energy consuming way of preparation represents an important drawback in the development of this kind of catalyst, especially when taking into account the current economic and ecological constraints. Moreover these foams present a number of others drawbacks inherent to their structure: (i) they are heavy and thus difficult to handle, (ii) they are not flexible and usually display micro-cracks, which render them breakable, (iii) they present many closed cells, which renders the reproducibility unpredictable, and (iv) the recovery of the expensive catalyst adsorbed on the foam often necessitates numerous chemical treatments in highly corrosive media. With POLYCATPUF, we propose an alternative based on the use of polyurethane open cell foams (OCPUF). These foams, commercially available in very large quantities and at low cost, present the same structural properties than ceramic or metallic foams, with the advantage to be easily engineered because of their lightweight and mechanical flexibility (elastomer). Recently, we have demonstrated that the whole surface of this polymeric structured material can be efficiently coated with polydopamine (PDA). This layer of PDA (OCPUF@PDA) allows the grafting of inorganic nanoparticles, as well as the covalent anchoring of organic compounds (Patent WO 2016 012689 A2). Moreover this coating process is industrially valuable because it operates at room temperature in water in the sole presence of dopamine and a buffer. These preliminary results constitute the basis of our project. POLYCATPUF is a frontier research project that involves the close collaboration of three academic partners, mastered in surface science and materials, catalysis, and chemical engineering, and of an industrial partner. A consortium based on an experience of several years between the partners. The project aims to demonstrate all the potentialities offered by open cell polymeric foams as support for both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. First of all, the covalent anchoring of homogeneous catalysts opens the door to a large variety of catalysts that were unconceivable with ceramic or metallic foams. The possibility to graft both single-site and multi-site catalysts allows conceiving processes of combined catalysis. Thanks to the presence of an industrial partner, the use of OCPUF as catalytic support will also be evaluated in an industrial reactor. Finally based on the elastic properties of OCPUF, innovative reactors will be envisioned. The use of these OCPUF as catalytic supports may thus have a significant scientific, technologic, economic, and ecologic impact on the current industrial processes, from which might benefit the whole society.