TU EIRES Lunch lecture 2025

You are warmly invited to join this 61st EIRES Lunch lecture. 

Topic
Scaling up plasma technology  from lab- to industrial scale

Speaker
Dirk van den Bekerom | Lead scientist plasma synthesis at TNO

Organized by
Richard van de Sanden

Introduction

Plasma processes are widely used in the high-tech industry, although at this moment the application of plasma technology in the chemical industry is limited. In recent years, the option of applying plasma chemistry has gained renewed interest. The reason for this is the ever-increasing burden of CO2 emissions and the increasing availability of green electricity. Plasma technology has the potential to enable fully CO2-free chemistry on an industrial scale based on green electricity. Given these developments, high-temperature processes based on fossil fuels are rapidly losing interest compared to alternative electrical processes such as plasma chemistry.

Quite some developments are still needed especially regarding the scaling up of the technology from lab- to industrial scale . The use case Methane valorization will be presented in this lecture, it is a perfect  first example of a "forgotten option" for sustainable chemistry. Last year, Brightsite announced the spin-out Thoriant, aiming at methane valorization  using  plasma technology for the production of emission-free hydrogen, acetylene and ethylene.

About the speaker

Dirk obtained his PhD degree at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research in the Netherlands, where he developed laser and IR diagnostics for the quantification of vibrational non-equilibrium in CO₂ microwave plasmas. As a postdoc at The Ohio State University and Sandia National Labs, he further developed advanced laser diagnostics for the investigation of non-equilibrium plasmas. Currently he works as lead scientist plasma synthesis at TNO, within the Brightsite collaboration of Maastricht University, Sitech Services and TNO. This program focusses on the development plasma processes to reduce the CO₂ emission in the chemical industry, by scaling up plasma technology to industrially relevant scales through the integration of lab-, intermediate-, and pilot scale experiments.