Description of CEA and LITEN
The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission is a public body established in October 1945.
As leader in research, development and innovation, the CEA is active in four main areas: low-carbon energies, defense and security, information technologies and health technologies. In each of these fields, the CEA maintains a cross-disciplinary culture of engineers and researchers, building on the synergies between fundamental and technological research. As a prominent player in the European Research Area, with an internationally acknowledged level of expertise in its core competencies, CEA is engaged in collaborative projects with leading academic and industrial partners from around the world.
Within CEA, the Technological Research Division boasts three operational institutes providing innovative research to improve industrial competitiveness through technology transfer. Located in Grenoble, CEA focused on new energy technologies and has a staff of 1000 people. Every year LITEN puts in place 400 research contracts and carries out R&D on behalf of industrial partners from a wide range of market segments: energy, land transportation, aerospace, construction, civil engineering, environmental, and IT industries, amongst others.
Intellectual property forms a major part of LITEN activities. LITEN has a portfolio of 1,100 international patents, filing 200 patents in 2012, 235 in 2013, and 230 in 2014, 1 424 patents cumulated in 2016. CEA Laboratory involved in more than 80 FCH projects since 2008.
CEA is involved in projects dealing with the extraction/separation and valorization of critical metals based on a solid know-how developed in metal separation by HydroMetallurgy, ionometallurgy and state of the art laboratories in Grenoble for waste treatment.
Description of CEA and LITEN in Fuel Cells
9 years ago CEA teams located in Grenoble started to work on the recycling of the devices developed internally such as batteries (Li-ion, NiMH), fuel cells, solar panels and more recently permanent magnets, by setting up recovery techniques for valuable metals or materials.
CEA has a unit dedicated to energy for transport application, which has more than 20 years experiences in fuel cells research and development. More than 50 persons are currently working on PEMFC components and stacks for transportation and stationary applications, in cooperation with the industry: membrane & MEA fabrication, bipolar plates’ design & production, microstructure/electrochemical characterization, physical properties measurements, local in-situ instrumentation and multi-scale modelling. Since 2010, CEALITEN is also conducting LCAs and Techno-economic assessments on materials developed specifically for renewable energy applications.
CEA, considered as a research center brings it expertise on recycling processes, on manufacturing and testing of MEA in Best4Hy project.
