Researchers from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) used the summer conference season to share CANMILK research with the scientific community. Between June and July 2026, the team presented different scientific contributions at four national and international conferences, highlighting recent research activities within CANMILK, ranging from catalyst development and characterisation to modelling approaches supporting the understanding of plasma-catalytic methane oxidation.
13th National Meeting on Catalysis and Porous Materials (XIII ENCMP)
The 13th National Meeting on Catalysis and Porous Materials (XIII ENCMP) took place at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL), Portugal, from 15 to 17 June 2026.
The IST team contributed four presentations related to catalytic and plasma-assisted methane conversion:
- Oral presentation: Carmen Bacariza, “Metal-supported zeolites for plasma-assisted catalysis: Challenges and opportunities in CO₂ and CH₄ conversion”
- Oral presentation: Diogo Nascimento, “Structure composition effect on methane oxidation by thermal- and plasma-assisted DBD catalysis”
- Poster presentation: Renata Pacheco, “Catalytic oxidation of dilute methane streams over palladium-based catalysts”
- Science communication competition: Diogo Nascimento, “ExpliC²a-Me”. This contest’s goal was to explain research work to young people without specialist knowledge.
More information about the conference is available on the XIII ENCMP website.
Oral Presentation at FEZA 2026
At the 10th Conference of the Federation of the European Zeolite Associations (FEZA), held in Naples, Italy, from 28 June to 2 July 2026, Carmen Bacariza gave the oral presentation: “Zeolite-supported Pd catalysts for CH₄ oxidation and NOₓ abatement: impact of Si/Al ratio, compensating cation and promoter nature”
Further details are available on the FEZA 2026 website.
CQE Days 2026
IST researchers also presented four CANMILK-related contributions at CQE Days 2026, held at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL), Portugal, from 28 to 29 June 2026.
The presentations addressed methane oxidation under thermal and plasma conditions, catalyst optimisation and kinetic modelling:
- Oral presentation: Diogo Nascimento, “Ultra-lean methane oxidation using palladium catalysts in thermal and plasma conditions”
- Flash presentation: Rita Costa and Renata Pacheco, “Pd-based zeolites for cattle barn methane oxidation: Effects of pre-treatment and feed gas composition on catalytic performance”
- Poster presentation: Liuqiang Gu, “DFT-Derived Surface Kinetics for Plasma-Assisted Catalytic Oxidation of Methane”
- Poster presentation: Renata Pacheco, “Low-Concentration Methane Abatement Using Pd/Al₂O₃ and Pd Zeolite Catalysts”
Additional information can be found on the CQE Days 2026 website.
ESCAMPIG 2026
Additionally, IST team presented five contributions at ESCAMPIG 2026, including four posters and one oral presentation entitled “Unraveling Surface Kinetics in O₂ and CO₂ Plasmas via Hierarchical Data-Driven Optimization”.
