Room 137, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Central Campus
Sugars, amino acids or organic acids are typically solid at room temperature. Nonetheless when combined at a particular molar fraction they present a high melting point depression, becoming liquids at room temperature. These are called Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents – NADES. NADES are envisaged to play a major role on different chemical engineering processes in the future, playing a significant role towards the development of greener and sustainable processes. NADES applications go beyond chemical or materials engineering and cover a wide range of fields from biocatalysis, electrochemistry and carbon dioxide capture. In this seminar, some of the developed work will be presented on the exploration of these systems in applications with significant impact in our well-being. For this reason, and owing to their many desirable solvent characteristics, NADESs have been rapidly accumulating from the beginning of this century in scientific literature as green media. For the vast potential applications of NADESs to come to reality, the availability of physical properties is a prerequisite. Furthermore, the physical properties of compounds, such as density, viscosity, surface tension, boiling and freezing points, etc., play crucial roles in identifying the nature of compounds at a microscopic level. In this communication, the fundamental properties of NADES coupled with the relevance of their understanding in the design of new chemical engineering processes will be discussed.
In the late part of the seminar, the solubility of CO2 in DES supported membranes will be discussed. Effective gas separation using DES supported in PTFE membranes, and the permeability of these membranes to different gases such as N2, CH4 and CO2 will be presented. A sustainable method to improve further the selectivity and efficiency of gas separation using DES-supported membranes is to add a biocatalyst to improve the solubility of CO2, such as the use of carbonic anhydrase.
The last date of registration is February 25, 2025. Attendees will get the certificate after participation in the event.
Ana Rita C. Duarte is currently Associate Professor with habillitation at the Chemistry Department from Nova FCT. She was previously Research Assistant at the 3B’s research group at Universidade do Minho, where she worked for 10 years. She graduated in Chemical Engineering by Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2002 and completed her PhD in 2006 by the same University. The International Society for Advancement of Supercritical Fluids granted her thesis the Best Thesis Award in 2007. Her main research interests are the use of green technologies for the development of biomaterials. In particular, the use of water, and supercritical fluids together with the exploration of natural deep eutectic solvents for pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications. At the moment she has more than 200 documents listed in scopus with more than 9000 citations and an h-index of 50, being part of the list of top 2% of scientists according to Standford/Elsevier annual ranking.
Rita Paula Paiva Craveiro is currenly Research & Development Manager at DES Solutio. She completed her PhD at NOVA University, Lisbon. Her thesis title was “ Engineering Bio-based Polymers using Alternative Solvents and Processes”. Her main research interests are the structure and dynamics of DES, applications of DES in gas separation and biochemical reaction.
