The stakes are high, with global warming accelerating: +1.1 °C since 1850 and a risk of exceeding +4 °C by 2100. In a vicious circle, sea levels and ocean temperatures are rising, Arctic sea ice and snow cover are shrinking, and climate disruptions are increasing.
The cause? The increase in greenhouse gases (GHG) driven by human activities, partly due to the use of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal).
The Paris Agreement on climate commits industry to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. To meet these commitments, it is urgent to rethink our energy supply and decarbonize the production, distribution, and use of energy.
Decarbonizing energy means reducing our consumption of primary fossil energies by progressively and fully replacing them with renewable or low‑carbon sources. The goal is to drastically reduce our carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. Cryogenics can transform how we produce energy and accelerate the energy transition through industrial innovations such as electric superconducting motors, liquid hydrogen aircraft, or nuclear fusion.
There are many energy sources, each with a different impact on our ecosystems:
Our design office engineers work every day on the research and development of new ways to produce, store, and use energy with a lower environmental footprint, enabling decarbonized mobility. Our teams rely on specialized software to support the design and modelling phases before moving into production.
One of Absolut System’s core strengths is superconductivity, enabled by the use of liquid cryogens such as nitrogen, hydrogen, or helium. We specialize in cooling superconducting cables and in the full cryogenic fluid and thermal management chain for a wide range of applications (superconducting motors, high‑power wind turbine generators, and more). Absolut System develops several types of liquefiers based on Reverse Turbo‑Brayton technology, enabling industrial players to test and deploy superconductivity and, ultimately, access liquefied hydrogen. This technology delivers cryogenic cooling with very low vibration and high reliability.
How does it work? Nuclear fusion combines hydrogen atoms without generating long‑lived radioactive waste, by reproducing the reactions at work in the core of stars. This fusion takes place in a tokamak, a doughnut‑shaped vessel where temperatures reach several million degrees.
In stars, as in fusion devices, plasmas form the medium in which hydrogen atoms can fuse and release energy. The particles that make up the plasma, being electrically charged, can be confined and controlled using powerful magnetic fields generated by superconducting magnets.
With this technique, these magnets can generate the very intense magnetic fields required to confine and stabilize the plasma.
To maintain the superconducting state of the confinement magnets, Absolut System relies on cryogenic technologies, cooling them to temperatures close to −250 °C (around 20 K).
Cryogenics makes it possible to cool generators, which then become more compact and more efficient. At equal size, this means significantly higher power output. Large next‑generation wind turbines help increase the share of renewable energy feeding the grid.
