The Amélia de Mello Foundation awarded the project “CCU-Tailor: Projeto e Optimização de processos de captura e conversão de CO2 à medida do contexto industrial”, developed by three professors in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Técnico, which aims at designing and optimising CO2 capture and conversion processes at an industrial level. The project aims to develop commercial software for carbon capture and utilization. The also researchers Pedro Mendes (Centro de Química Estrutural – CQE), Henrique Matos (Centro de Recursos Naturais e Ambiente – CERENA) and Carmen Bacariza (CQE) were awarded the José Manuel de Mello Entrepreneurship Grant 2024. The grant was presented by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, on 28 June at Centro Cultural de Belém.
Pedro Mendes, the project’s principal investigator, says that with this grant, it will be possible “to have a real impact on improving the sustainability of Portuguese industry” by creating “a tool based on solid scientific knowledge”. The project aims to reach “a level of direct application of decarbonisation in the chemical industry” and use existing knowledge “to develop software – CCU-Tailor – to design industrial decarbonisation processes, tailored to the context of each factory”.
The 150,000 euros raised will be “mainly invested in hiring researchers and purchasing computers” to develop the software, as well as acquiring the “Ecoinvent database” to “estimate the real impact of the designed CCU (Carbon Capture and Utilisation) processes with a high degree of comprehensiveness and precision”, says the CQE researcher.
Pedro Mendes highlights the approach to “various national industries to assess their difficulties in decarbonisation” for the subsequent “development of process models” as the next steps.
This grant, awarded by the Amélia de Mello Foundation in partnership with the Business Council for Sustainable Development Portugal, supports entrepreneurs with original projects in sustainability and decarbonisation.
In 2021, Maria Paula Mendes, a researcher at CERIS – Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability, received the Alfredo da Silva Scientific Award, in the Entrepreneurship category, promoted by the Amélia Mello Foundation.
Every year, the Amélia Mello Foundation awards the Bondalti and Fundação Amélia de Mello scholarships to Técnico students.
