On the 27th-28th of June the 3rd Doctoral Congress in Engineering took place at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.

The Congress was divided in 14 Symposiums involving 952 authors from 23 countries with about 500 inscriptions, which is unprecedented in Portugal for an event of this type. In the Symposium of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rafael Morais presented a poster with one of the most recent developed works related with carbon materials as electrocatalysts towards Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) entitled “Non-noble metal biomass-derived carbons for oxygen reduction reaction”.

This work presented some of the preliminary results of incorporating iron (ii) phthalocyanine into a hydrothermal polymerized glucose which was posteriorly carbonized and resulted in a very weak electrocatalyst towards ORR. The Fe-N4 complex in the carbon structure of this weak material shifted the onset potential 200 mV to more positive potentials and resulted in a catalyst with an improved reaction mechanism, approximating the material to the performance of the commercial Pt/C currently used.

The poster presentation received the “Best Poster Presentation Award” for the Symposium of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Non-noble metal biomass-derived carbons for oxygen reduction reaction

Rafael G. Morais, Natalia Rey-Raap, Miguel A. Granja, José L. Figueiredo, M. Fernando R. Pereira

Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM, Departamento de Engenharia Química, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, R. Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal

DCE 2019 – Doctoral Congress in Engineering 2019, 27-28 June 2019, Porto, Portugal.

Conference website: https://paginas.fe.up.pt/~dce/2019/