About Us
CEFT (Centro de Estudos de de Fenómenos de Transporte) stands for Transport Phenomena Research Center in Portuguese.
It began its activity in 1996 and its proponents were four professors of FEUP, two of the Department of Chemical Engineering and two of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and one professor of the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra. During its period of activity CEFT was evaluated 5 times by FCT and in 3 of them was classified with Very Good (1996, 2001 and 2013) and in another with Excellent (2007). In 2018 CEFT maintains 44 researchers, of which 24 are permanent. Recently, CEFT has started a process of empowering its younger, very active and knowledgeable generation, giving them a greater power of decision.
The research of CEFT on transport phenomena spans from the macro to the micro scales and integrates successfully an experimental approach with numerical methods and theoretical formulations. The activity is organized in two main groups, Energy and Fluids.
The activities developed by the energy group are mainly focused on the optimization and development of fuel cell technology and systems for hydrogen production and storage. Studies on heat and mass transfer in textiles and on the conditions of thermal stress in certain professional activities are of great importance.
The Fluids group has 4 main sub-areas: Complex fluids, include flows of non-Newtonian fluids, computational rheology, and the investigation of elastic instabilities, inertial and elastic turbulence; Smart fluids have viscosities that can be tuned by the appropriate use of magnetic fields; Multiphase flows, computational fluid dynamics investigations are carried out for diverse applications as the combination with 3D printing for process intensification; Biofluid flows encompasses flows quite diverse, development of biochips for trapping and fast detection of pathogenies, studies on cell adhesion and biofilms to biofouling and infection risk prevention.
The dissemination of knowledge, an imperative social activity, and the training of highly skilled young researchers in Transport Phenomena are also important achievements of the group. For this purpose, CEFT supports some groups of young researchers who are working in Polytechnic Institutes.
Advisory Commitee
Deborah Jones
Université de Montpellier
John Sherwood
University of Cambridge
John Tsamopoulos
University of Pratas
Marcel Escudier
Université of Liverpool