AirLiquide - L'AIR LIQUIDE, Société Anonyme pour l'Etude et l'Exploitation des Procédés Georges Claude

Founded in 1902, Air Liquide began as an idea to produce oxygen industrially using liquid air, and came into existence after an encounter between two men: Georges Claude, the visionary and Paul Delorme, the pragmatic creator. Since then, Air Liquide is a French-based group, world leader in industrial and medical gases with 9.4 billion euros turnover and 36,000 employees.

In more than 75 countries, Air Liquide supplies more than 1 million customers in extremely diverse industries such as steel industry, food and beverage, electronics or pharmaceuticals. Its core business is to supply oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and many other gases and services to most industries in more than 65 countries. Air Liquide has pursued a development strategy for many years, one which is based on creating long-term value. At the beginning of 2008, the Group affirmed its ambition to be the world’s recognized leader in industrial, health and environmental gases. Innovation continues to be an essential value for the Company. Within the Group, 1,000  researchers of over 30 nationalities combine their varied skills to create the innovations of tomorrow. Over 120 R&D ongoing studies and projects are being developed along 3 main research axes in 15 domains of R&D activities. R&D is present on 3 continents within 8 Research Centres. Located in the South of Paris, CRCD is the main Air Liquide R&D centre in Europe with about 230 researchers working in 35 laboratories furnished with state-of-the-art equipment, test pilots and experimental platforms.

Air Liquide activities in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) stem from the belief that traditional fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) are gradually decreasing whereas energy needs are constantly increasing. It is therefore essential as of today to use energy more efficiently, to develop cleaner alternative energies and contribute to the mitigation of GHG emissions. For this last mission, the Group’s teams develop processes for CO2 capture and storage. By using its expertise, the Group’s researchers are developing, in partnership with furnace manufacturers, oxycombustion technologies to produce fumes that are more concentrated in CO2. They are also working on CO2 purification technologies and are involved in many test projects in Europe, North America and Australia. These technologies will enable CO2 to be more efficiently captured in order to store it in underground geological formations. This technology of geological storage reproduces what nature has been doing for millions of years in natural CO2 deposits.