The 8th International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis, CarboCat – VIII, took place in Porto from June 26 to 29. The event was organized by the Catalysis and Carbon Materials group of the Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM, under the auspices of the Carbon Group of the Portuguese Chemical Society (C@SPQ).

Following the previous CarboCat meetings held in Lausanne (2004), Saint-Petersburg (2006), Berlin (2008), Dalian (2010), Brixen (2012), Trondheim (2014) and Strasbourg (2016), CarboCat-VIII was devoted to new developments and fundamental advances on carbon materials (conventional and nanostructured carbons) for catalytic applications.

The Scientific Program included 3 Plenary Lectures by renowned scientists, namely Professors Graham Hutchings (Cardiff University, UK), Krijn P. de Jong (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and Robert Schlögl (Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, Germany), 4 Key-Note Lectures (Siglinda Perathoner, Italy; Magdalena Titirici, UK; Magnus Rønning, Norway; and Nathalie Job, Belgium), 33 oral communications and 85 posters communications, of which 12 were also selected for Short Oral presentation. The venue of CarboCat VIII was the Almeida Garrett Municipal Library, located in the magnificent gardens of “Palácio de Cristal”, and kindly made available by the Town Hall, where the 130 delegates from 18 different countries were adequately received.

The Social Program included a welcome reception, a boat trip in the Douro, a visit to the Port Wine Cellars, and the Congress Dinner, which also featured a taste of “Fado”, the traditional Portuguese song, performed by our own post-doctoral researcher Rita Ruivo.

It was most rewarding to learn that the participants returned home with Porto in their hearts!

More information about this year edition of CarboCat – VIII at: http://carbocatviii.eventos.chemistry.pt/

On past day 27th June 2018, Emeritus Professor Alírio Rodrigues has been invited as Educational Keynote Speaker on XPURE Symposium - Road Map for Industrial Implementation of Advanced Adsorption/ Chromatography Technologies: EBA and SMB, at Castle Oud-Poelgeest, The Netherlands.

The lecture entitled "Recent Developments in Adsorption Technologies (Batch and SMB)" was appreciated by the audience.

The Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM recognizes the merit and excellent research work of the Cyclic Adsorption/Reaction Processes group in this particular research area!

Information about the pure-systems GmbH: www.pure-systems.com