Innovation Management Trophies

On 26^th August 2008, François Darchis, Air Liquide Senior Vice-President in charge of R&D, Advanced Technologies and Engineering & Construction, member of the Executive committee, received the “Award for Open Innovation Management” at the Innovation Management Trophies presentation ceremony.

Created in 2007 and organized by the Expansion Group and BearingPoint consulting Group in partnership with École des Ponts ParisTech and TNS Sofres, these trophies are awarded to French and international companies for the best innovation practices.

The prize awarded to Air Liquide by a jury of independent experts recognises and rewards a partnership with an innovative US start-up company, Nitrocision for Nitrojet™, a process using liquid nitrogen (-196°C) at very high pressure (3000 bar) for clean cutting and blasting concrete surfaces.

Nitrojet™ is an innovation developed in a win-win partnership where each party benefits from the technological and commercial competencies of the other. Air Liquide brings its low temperature and high pressure know-how as well as blasting technology for the development of Nitrojet™.

This innovation is presently being tested in one of the Air Liquide research centers, in St Ouen l’Aumône near Paris. These tests will help optimize operational applications in 2009. One of these applications brings an environmental and economic solution for the clean dismantlement of nuclear reactors: surface blasting (concrete, steel, …) thanks to the Nitrojet™ process which reduces the volume of radioactive effluents, thus decreasing the amount of effluent required to be stored.