With origins dating back to the eighteenth century, the University of Porto (UPORTO) is currently one the most prestigious Higher Education Institutions of Europe. It has close to 33 000 students, 2 567 Academic & Scientific Staff along with 1 625 administrative staff within its 15 schools and 49 scientific research units, spread across 3 university campuses located in the city of Porto.
The Faculty of Engineering (FEUP) is the largest faculty of UP, with about 8570 students and 750 teaching staff and researchers across 9 departments. It is located in the Asprela Campus, the main university campus in the city of Porto. FEUP hosts 8 R&D centers that promote the development of innovative technological solutions.
At ZeroCarb project, UPORTO is represented by the Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy (LEPABE – https://lepabe.fe.up.pt/); an R&D center hosted at FEUP. Established in 1998, LEPABE is an interdisciplinary group, with 3 pillars of development: Sustainability and Energy, Processes and Products, Environment and Health. LEPABE has been evaluated as “Excellent” in consecutive external evaluations appointed by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia). It counts with >260 researchers, among which about 100 have doctoral degrees.
ACTIVITIES
in ZeroCarb
UPORTO, as coordinator of the ZeroCarb project, is responsible for the project management and dissemination. Building on its experience in previous project 112CO2 (EIC Pathfinder), UPORTO contributes on the upscaling of catalyst activation process, reactor optimization for intermediate-temperature catalytic methane splitting process, aiming to enhance hydrogen productivity, catalyst stability and carbon morphology control. These tasks will benefit from current expertise on modeling and simulation.
Meet
Team Members
Paula Dias
Project coordinator & Assistant Reseacher
Paula Dias is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) since 2016. Currently, she is permanent Assistant Researcher at LEPABE/ALICE, and invited Professor for the Renewable Energies I course at the FEUP. Her major training aimed at Processes, Products and Energy with complementary training in Photoelectrochemistry. She is also deeply involved in an emerging topic – Catalytic Methane Splitting, being the coordinator of EIC Transition project – ZeroCarb. P Dias has been participating actively in >20 research projects: EU projects 112CO2, Diamond, PECDemo, NEREUS and SYMBOL; and Nacional projects SHAPPE, DreamPEC, ASAPFuels, TanPT, IronFlow, and SunStorage. Her publications include >30 in peer-review international scientific articles, 3 provisionary patents, 3 press releases/perspectives, and >60 participations in international conferences. She also had some training in entrepreneurship and technology commercialization, and co-founded HyCarb, Lda. (2024, https://www.hycarb.net/).
Adélio Mendes
WP Leader & Full Professor
Adélio Mendes is full professor at FEUP and researcher at LEPABE, where he leads the Energy, Processes and Products area. Professor Mendes authored or co-authored >500 articles in peer-review international journals, filled >35 families of patents and is the author of a textbook. In 2012, he received an Advanced Research Grant from the ERC on dye-sensitized solar cells for building integrated and since 2013 he is partner in 6 more EU projects and leads one EU project. He received the Air Products Faculty Excellence 2011 Award (USA) for developments in gas separation and Solvay & Hovione Innovation Challenge 2011 prize, Ramos Catarino Innovation Award 2011-2012, ACP Diogo Vasconcelos Applied Research Award 2011 for developments is dye sensitized solar cells, City of Porto Merit Municipal Medal – Gold Degree in 2015, the Prize of Coimbra University of 2016 and prize of Scientific Excellence of FEUP 2016. Presently, he is the Coordinator of CEner-FEUP, the Competence Center for Energy of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto. 11 spin-off companies were born from his research team.
Luís Alves
Junior Researcher
Luís Alves is a Junior Researcher working in the ZeroCarb project. Developed his PhD, awarded cum laude by the University of Porto, on methane splitting, developing supported catalysts, reactors and an innovative regeneration method – interfacial hydrogenation. Author of 7 peer-reviewed articles and inventor of 3 patents on methane splitting technology.
Ricardo Coelho
Project Researcher
Ricardo Coelho is a Project Researcher working on the ZeroCarb project. Working for 3 years in methane splitting, developed deposition techniques, and studied the interference of contaminants in the reaction efficiency. Mainly involved in automation, process monitoring, and scale-up reactor design.
Vítor Pereira
PhD Student
Vitor Pereira is a PhD student working in the ZeroCarb project. His work focuses of reactor development and simulation. Author of 4 peer-reviewed articles and inventor of 3 patents on methane splitting technology.
Bernardo Soares
PhD Student
Bernardo Soares, MSc in Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and current PhD candidate, is working on the ZeroCarb project. His research focuses on the development and optimization of activation procedures of metallic alloy substrates for catalytic methane splitting technology.
João Diaz
PhD Student
João Diaz is a PhD student currently integrated into the ZeroCarb Project. His research background includes significant contributions to the 112CO2 project, where he assisted in the advancement of Methane Splitting technology. In 2024, he was awarded a FCT scholarship, fueling his current focus on the development of supported catalysts and system scalability.
