News and Events

Project members present SYAMESE advances at the ESCAMPIG 2026 conference in Funchal, Madeira!

SYAMESE researchers André Filipe, Bianca Kolling, Diogo Franco and Inês Santos presented the latest advances of the SYAMESE project as posters at the Europhysics Conference on the Atomic and Molecular Physics of Ionized Gases (ESCAMPIG 2026). This international conference took place in Funchal and had approximately 250 participants, many of which visited the posters and had interesting discussions with the SYAMESE project members. The poster contents included fundamental aspects of fluid modelling of both CO₂ plasmas and oxygen ion transport in separation membranes, along with numerical evidence of appropriate physical conditions for plasma-membrane reactor performance!

A new paper on surface kinetics in CO₂ plasmas

A new paper has been published on Plasma Chem. Plasma Proc. on the role of volume and surface processes for atomic oxygen loss in CO₂ plasmas by Pedro Viegas and Vasco Guerra, in collaboration with Blandine Berdugo from LPP, École Polytechnique. This publication takes advantage of the previous paper (on oxygen plasmas) to highlight that it is simpler to estimate the fundamental parameter of atomic oxygen surface recombination probability in CO₂ plasmas than in O₂.

Joana Araújo defended her MSc thesis on “Multidimensional fluid modelling of reactor coupling plasma and oxygen separation membrane”

SYAMESE researcher Joana Araújo successfully defended her MSc thesis on December, 4^th, 2025, on “Multidimensional fluid modelling of reactor coupling plasma and oxygen separation membrane”. Joana developed the first-ever numerical model simultaneously describing the dynamics of species in the plasma and an oxygen conducting membrane, a breakthrough for SYAMESE! Among many results, the simulation results in this figure show how CO₂ plasma conversion efficiency can be significantly improved by oxygen permeation (“w/ OP”) with respect to the standard plasma case (“w/o OP”). Congratulations Joana!

Inês Santos defended her MSc thesis on “Design and modeling of a plasma reactor for the production of O₂ from the conversion of CO₂”

SYAMESE researcher Inês Santos successfully defended her MSc thesis on November, 18^th, 2025, on “Design and modeling of a plasma reactor for the production of O₂ from the conversion of CO₂”. Her work led to the production and characterization of oxygen-conducting BSCF and LSCF membranes, and to reactor simulations demonstrating the feasibility of direct plasma-membrane coupling. Congratulations Inês!

A new paper on plasma-surface kinetics

A new paper on the role of volume and surface processes for atomic oxygen loss in plasmas has been published in Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. by Pedro Viegas and Vasco Guerra, in collaboration with Tiago Dias from the University of Michigan. The publication provides insights on the role of the different processes and highlights the most accurate way to estimate the fundamental parameter of atomic oxygen surface recombination probability.

Congratulations for the first SYAMESE paper!

Project SYAMESE starts

The Kick-off meeting of project SYAMESE took place on January, 29th, 2025. The meeting had a hybrid presential-online format and was attended by team members, consultants and students interested in the research subjects. The meeting was organized with different presentations to introduce the project and discuss the status and perspectives for each task. Each presentation was followed by a lively extended discussion.

SYAMESE recommended for funding

Exploratory project SYAMESE was recommended for funding by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). It was ranked in first place by the Physics evaluation panel! Start date is January 2025.