Today’s edition of #MeetOurPartners is about our researcher Johan Loccufier, who works at Agfa, in Belgium. Within the ANEMEL project, he is in charge of designing and testing scale-up processes for producing the anion exchange polymer chemistry and our membranes. Let’s discover more about him!
Our researcher is an organic and polymer chemist. During his academic years, he focused on medicinal chemistry, working on polymers for cell targeting and similar applications. After completing his PhD, he joined Agfa, and he has now been with the company for almost 35 years!
Agfa is a Belgian multinational company with more than 150 years of expertise in imaging technology. Nowadays, it produces an extensive range of imaging systems and IT solutions, mainly for the printing industry and the healthcare sector. In addition, Agfa has broadened its scope beyond classical imaging, including the electronics industry and the field of renewable energy.
Currently, Loccufier is the department manager of a team that designs new chemistry for all AGFA consumable-related applications. “Over the years, I’ve been involved in a wide range of areas. Think of, for instance, in printed electronics or membrane technology for green hydrogen. But the basic starting point has always been molecular design for the different applications,” he says.
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Loccufier describes his role as looking a bit further into the future, anticipating needs: how a particular application might evolve extending to new areas, and what type of chemistry would be required to support that evolution.
So, it’s essentially working in discovery chemistry, but with an industrial perspective. While he focuses on the front end —on innovation and molecular design— he also has to keep industrialisation in mind, whether in terms of chemistry or material development, bearing in mind that everything eventually has to be scalable.
And what does all this have to do with ANEMEL? Just one word: membranes. In our project, some partners are working on the design of the membranes at laboratory scale. This means developing new chemical concepts to, for instance, synthesising polymers, which are the key ingredients used to build our membranes.
However, our focus is on the industrialisation of our prototypes. Loccufier’s role involves exploring how our membranes can be industrialised and what is lacking to make that possible. In other words, he is responsible for ensuring their manufacturability and scalability. Some of the key factors he considers include staying within certain cost limits, a feasible polymer design, selecting appropriate coating technologies … and avoiding PFAS, of course!
This is not always an easy task, as sometimes solutions that work in the lab turn out to be non-transferable to industrial scale. That’s why Loccufier must identify as early as possible “what we’re lacking in order to, at some point—not necessarily now, but eventually—translate this into an industrially feasible type of chemistry.” From time to time, he has to deliver a rather unwelcome message: some brilliant concepts can’t find a way to industrialisation. “In such cases, you have to go right back to the beginning, because it simply won’t work.”
Regarding ANEMEL, the outcome of the analysis and experimental work he has carried out so far indicates that “we have to redesign the polymer approach, while keeping its basic functionality, because with what’s on the table now, we will end up blocked either in the polymer synthesis or in the coating technology”.
As Loccufier says, the overall vision of the ANEMEL project is far too promising to end up at the lab level. And he adds more. For him, “green hydrogen will be one of the key elements in decarbonisation of society”. It’s true that hydrogen is already used in many industrial applications. However, most of it is grey hydrogen, that is, derived from fossils fuels.
“Grey hydrogen at this moment is still a lot cheaper than green hydrogen. So, every project that can help close the gap between grey and green hydrogen is of real importance,” says Loccufier. We will continue working to make that happen.