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MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship: Apply with IMT Atlantique and join us!

Thinking about your next career step and willing to boost your career? Looking to experience intersectoral, interdisciplinary and international research? Wishing to carry out your research in a place addressing industrial, environmental, societal and digital transitions as a priority challenge?

Then apply for a Marie Sklodowska-Curie (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship with IMT Atlantique as your host institution!

The MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships (PF) provide funding to promising postdoctoral researchers with a view to develop their academic and transferable skills and enhance their career prospects by moving and working abroad.

By applying with IMT Atlantique you give yourself a chance to join a technological university ranked among the top 500 universities in the world according to the Times Higher Education (THE) World University's 2026 ranking (top 301-400 for Computer Science, top 201-250 for Engineering, top 301-400 for Physical sciences, and the 124th in the 2026 THE Interdisciplinary Science ranking, and top 51-100 for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in the 2025 Shangaï ranking. IMT Atlantique is also awarded with the “Bienvenue en France” label, a recognition delivered by Campus France for our capacity to welcome and host international researchers in the best working conditions.

Topic open:

Industrial post combustion CO2 capture units in Europe, either in operation or commissioned in mid-term projects almost all operate with advanced amine-based solvent scrubbing technologies. All these processes involve a steam stripping desorption step for solvent thermal regeneration that induces quite a high energy penalty, with a reboiler duty estimated around 2.5 GJ/tCO2. Furthermore, additional water requirements resulting from solvent evaporation losses, steam generation and cooling, increase pressure on water resource in a context of extending water scarce areas.

The main objective of the project is to develop microwave (MW) heating modular processes for thermal desorption of CO2 loaded solvents. Thanks to supply of decarbonized power, the electrification of the desorption process should participate in lowering the environmental impact of the CO2 capture unit, in addition to improve its versatility for applications where steam is either not available or restricted to other usages.

MW irradiation has the advantage to induce fast, direct and selective heating of the internal dielectric components of the multiphase reactive system. Energy dissipation is then target to specific compounds and mainly takes place in the core of the reactive medium experimenting local high temperature rises. As a result, there is a potential for significant increase of the energy efficiency of the thermal desorption process. Our previous work has thus demonstrated a possible intensification of gas-liquid mass transfer rates resulting from temperature polarization of the liquid film in laminar flow at the interface of a porous membrane.

Whilst a multi-physic model was successfully developed after experimental validation to predict mass and heat transfer rates at elementary representative volume scale, the objective of the proposal will focus on performance demonstration and optimization of a packing gas-liquid contactor. The methodology will combine (1) experimental tests to be conducted on the WAVEINCORE bench that was recently labelled by the ECCSEL ERIC European research infrastructure, and (2) up-scaling of the modelling approach accounting for the coupling between 2.45 GHz electromagnetic waves and CO2 desorption from various solvents.

Besides technological improvement, this original research will substantially contribute to the progress of knowledge in separation process intensification.

References:

• • Hajj A., Curet S., Pré P., 2026, Separation and Purification Technology, Volume 389, 136751. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2026.136751
• • Hajj A., PhD thesis, 2024 “Coupling microwaves with a CO2 desorption process from amine solvent : experimental and modeling approaches”, IMT Atlantique, SPIN https://theses.fr/2024IMTA0412

Supervisors: Prof. Pascaline Pré (IMT Atlantique, GEPEA research unit) and Prof. Sébastien Curet (Oniris, GEPEA research unit)

Keywords:Separation process, CO2 capture, microwaves, desorption, multiphysics modelling, heat and mass transfers, intensification