Mar­tin Mor­geney­er, a tenured research sci­en­tist work­ing at UTC in the UTC-TIMR lab­o­ra­to­ry as part of the “Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing” team, also holds a Jean Mon­net Chair from the Euro­pean Union aimed at rais­ing aware­ness in regard to envi­ron­men­tal issues among the pub­lic and future engi­neers. Spe­cial­iz­ing in par­ti­cle sys­tems, he has led, in part­ner­ship with the CETIM, Iner­is and the com­pa­ny Mann+Hummel, the D‑Brake project, which aims to reduce brak­ing-relat­ed emis­sions into the air. The brake pad man­u­fac­tur­er Mat Fric­tion of Noy­on lat­er joined the project.

The Euro­pean Union has launched the imple­men­ta­tion of the Euro­pean Green Deal, a set of direc­tives ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment and, ulti­mate­ly, improv­ing the well-being and health of Euro­peans, includ­ing the “Air” Direc­tive, which came into force on Decem­ber 10, 2024, and address­es air qual­i­ty. This direc­tive is based very strict­ly on sci­en­tif­ic evidence.

Accord­ing to the WHO, pol­lu­tion is respon­si­ble for 6.7 mil­lion pre­ma­ture or pre­ventable deaths world­wide each year, includ­ing near­ly 40 000 in France. How­ev­er, among the main caus­es of this pol­lu­tion are par­tic­u­late matter—and more specif­i­cal­ly, fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter emit­ted when vehi­cles brake, as well as from the fric­tion of tyres run­ning over asphalt. With a rare sense of fore­sight, UTC, CETIM, Iner­is and the Stel­lan­tis Group have tak­en on this chal­lenge. “As ear­ly as late 2021—well before the ‘Air’ Direc­tive— we launched the ‘Clean­Brake’ the­sis project, ded­i­cat­ed to devel­op­ing a device capa­ble of char­ac­ter­iz­ing par­ti­cle emis­sions from brak­ing sys­tems in a rapid, effi­cient, and accu­rate man­ner through the imple­men­ta­tion of a mea­sure­ment chain,” states Mar­tin Morgeneyer.

This led to con­clu­sive results that enabled us—while still work­ing with the same aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners, now joined by the fil­ter man­u­fac­tur­er Mann+Hummel in Laval—to con­tin­ue our research thanks to fund­ing from ADEME. “Anoth­er man­u­fac­tur­er joined us along the way: the brake pad man­u­fac­tur­er Mat Fric­tion, based in Noy­on. This com­pa­ny has ful­ly embraced the envi­ron­men­tal and tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges of auto­mo­tive brak­ing. This part­ner­ship allowed us—as coor­di­na­tor of the ADEME project and a CIFRE the­sis in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mat Friction—to thor­ough­ly explore not only the needs but also cap­i­tal­ize on the capa­bil­i­ties of the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers. For the CIFRE the­sis, we uti­lized the mea­sure­ment chain to con­duct a para­met­ric study and deter­mine the opti­mal com­po­si­tion of the brake pads and rotors of the future,” he explains.

Today, Mar­tin Morgeneyer’s team has demon­strat­ed that brak­ing emis­sions can be reduced by 19%, 84%, or even 97%, esti­mat­ed the asso­ci­at­ed emis­sion fac­tors, and iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic trac­ers for brak­ing emis­sions. “In a brak­ing sys­tem, there will always be fric­tion. How­ev­er, we test­ed dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als for both brake pads and rotors to deter­mine the com­po­si­tion that would pro­vide the great­est reduc­tion in emis­sions. To do this, we brought togeth­er the exper­tise of each partner—namely, the tri­bol­o­gists and fric­tion spe­cial­ists from CETIM, the aerosol physi­cists from Iner­is and our own process exper­tise,” Mar­tin Morgeneyer.

The results are of unde­ni­able sci­en­tif­ic inter­est, as they have been the sub­ject of numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions in aca­d­e­m­ic journals—including the *Jour­nal of Tri­bol­o­gy*, *Envi­ron­ments*, and *Atmosphere*—as well as in tech­nol­o­gy-focused pub­li­ca­tions. “In fact, we have devel­oped mate­r­i­al for­mu­la­tions for both brake pads and pad-rotor com­bi­na­tions that have reduced par­tic­u­late emis­sions by more than 90 per­cent. “This is a suc­cess for research, but also for indus­try, since Mat Fric­tion is tak­ing over for the indus­tri­al­iza­tion phase,” he notes. Mar­tin Mor­geney­er and his part­ners do not intend to stop there. Two projects are cur­rent­ly under­way. “The first, which we can call ‘D‑Brake+,’ is fund­ed by the Hauts-de-France region and aims to accel­er­ate the indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the brak­ing sys­tems of the future. The sec­ond, MIPLEXMO, focus­es on the oth­er major source of par­tic­u­late emis­sions: tyre-to-road fric­tion from vehi­cles. Fund­ed by ADEME and involv­ing, in addi­tion to UTC, ENPC, INERIS, and two star­tups (OBERON and SOPAT), MIPLEXMO aims to bet­ter char­ac­ter­ize the dis­per­sion of microplas­tic par­ti­cles by improv­ing the mea­sure­ment of these par­ti­cles in the air,” con­cludes Mar­tin Morgeneyer.

MSD