On November 28, Air Liquide having a strategic slogan of Open Innovation held a contest titled Essential Small Molecule Contest, and announced the winners of three project groups.

The winners are Professor Kevin Sivula (Swiss Ecole Federal Polytechnique, Lausanne) on the subject of “How to produce hydrogen out of water using solar energy”; Professor Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University) and Professor Ryotaro Matsuda (Nagoya University) on the subject of “Development of nano space materials for high density storage and safe supply of gases”; Jean-Michel Savéant, Marc Robert, and Cyrille Constantin, professors at Paris-Diderot University and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) on the subject of “How to produce oxygen and carbon monoxide from CO2 in a sustainable way”

The contest was aimed to review the main corporate business lineups of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon dioxide as the basic molecules and to pursue further enhancements of them as scientific technologies. The period of application was January to May opened to everybody regardless of any belonging to organization. There were participations by academic teams from 25 countries and 130 scientific proposals from R&D organizations and start-ups.

The standard of evaluation was based on originality leading to innovative solutions to promote developments of energy and environments. For each of the three laureate projects, the winners will receive 50,000 euros.

Air Liquide is also ready to fund up to a total of maximum 1.5 million euros for three groups of projects applicable to the activities to mature their scientific proposals and transform them into commercializing of technical developments. With “Open Innovation” as one of its strategies, the company will seek to put together internal and external knowhow in order to accelerate R&D activities.