Breathe: air capture and remediation solution

Context and issues

In France, as in many European countries, regulatory air pollution limit values ​​are not always respected. This is particularly the case for fine particles and nitrogen oxides, the main sources of which are car traffic, heating or even industry.

The objectives of reducing the exposure of citizens to these pollutants encourage cities to act. But the actions proposed by cities and territories are generally difficult to implement. However, the overruns of the regulatory thresholds occurring in most of the large French cities place France in a position of infringement vis-à-vis the European Commission.

It is therefore necessary to combine these actions with solutions having a short-term impact, with the aim of reducing pollution levels now and thus improving the air we breathe.

Description of the experimentation project: test of outdoor air pollution control solutions

The project, led by ENGIE France Networks with the support of the scientific teams of the ENGIE Lab Crigen, consists in evaluating the performance of remediation systems. The experiment will take place on the site of the CPCU (Parisian District Heating Company), located in the Saint-Ouen docks district.

The selected remediation solutions will be evaluated in parallel in order to validate their performance according to the different use cases and thus ensure their relevance.

This study will focus mainly on defining the efficiency of reducing fine particles in suspension in the air. It would nevertheless be interesting to be able to follow the evolution of other substances, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2), during the tests.

 Progress of the project :

• choice of fine particle (PM) capture/remediation systems;
• selection and installation of a network of sensors on the experiment site in order to monitor the evolution of the concentrations of fine particles (PM) or even nitrogen dioxide (NO2);
• choosing the location of remediation solutions using digital flow modeling tools (CFD);
• installation of remediation solutions and launch of the experiment;
• exploitation of the results and validation of the performance of the solutions;
• validation of use cases adapted to remedial solutions.

The duration of this experiment will be approximately 6 months.