Job Opportunities

PhD – High temperature kinetic, Thermodynamic, and Thermophysical Properties of Graphitic Biomass-Derived Biocarbon (Biochar): Applications in Energy Storage

Expected hire date: 01/11/2026

Entity/Direction/Service: RAPSODEE Center – CNRS Joint Research Unit 5302 (UMR 5302)

This work is part of an ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant project. The ERC is a European funding organisation that supports groundbreaking research projects through very competitive grants, as part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme.
The ERC project aims at evaluating the storage capacity of innovative biocarbon composites, a sustainable family of advanced biomass-based carbon materials to store energy in various environments, as opposed to most of the current solutions relying on fossil fuel-based or non-sustainable materials. This should translate into remarkable CO2 emissions reduction and energy savings. The work will be carried out in an international environment with regular visits to partners’ laboratories in France, India, and the USA.
Current studies are focused on the selection of biomass feedstocks, their characterisation, and on pyrolysis and graphitization to produce biocarbon composites as well as their use for energy storage in various configurations and environments.

As part of this ERC work and in parallel with other ongoing studies in our research group, this PhD work will be focused on the measurement and calculation of thermodynamic and kinetic data. Insight into the kinetic and thermodynamic behaviour, namely dissolution-precipitation, grain nucleation, growth, and stability of the biocarbon-based composite during their formation, will be determined in constructing a multi-component phase diagram, among other approaches. The data obtained from the experiment will be compared to that from modelling. This approach should enable the optimization of the thermophysical and chemical properties of the biocarbon and fine-tune the experimental and numerical procedures.

• Application deadline: August 31, 2026
• Required documents: CV, cover letter, and 1 or 2 recommendation letters
• More information and application here: Institut Mines-Télécom – PhD – High-Temperature Kinetic, Thermodynamic, and Thermophysical Properties of Graphitic Biomass-Derived Biocarbon (Biochar): Applications in Energy Storage – CDD 36 months

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