With the sup­port of Gulf Refin­ing Com­pa­ny, Almer McDuffie McAfee devel­oped the petro­le­um indus­try’s first com­mer­cial­ly viable cat­alyt­ic crack­ing process‑a method that could dou­ble or even triple the gaso­line yield­ed from crude oil by then-stan­dard dis­til­la­tion meth­ods. Based part­ly on an 1877 Friedel-Crafts patent, the McAfee crack­ing process required anhy­drous alu­minum chlo­ride, a cat­a­lyst that was pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive. In 1923 McAfee and Gulf would solve that prob­lem by devel­op­ing a way to syn­the­size the cat­alyt­ic reagent at low cost, on an indus­tri­al scale. Indeed, each time McAfee’s meth­ods appeared to become obso­lete, cir­cum­stances changed in his favor. Today the results of McAfee’s fur­ther work with alu­minum chlo­ride, which led to the Alchlor process, are still on the scene.

For a more com­plete his­to­ry on McAfee’s inno­va­tions (by Paul T. Buono­ra), please see Chem­i­cal Her­itage Mag­a­zine, 16:2 (Fall 1998). Chem­i­cal Her­itage Foun­da­tion web­site: www.chemheritage.org/.
 
Con­tributed by J. Armor

Use of lead alkyls, pri­mar­i­ly in the form of tetraethyl­lead, to enhance the octane num­ber and per­for­mance of U.S. motor gaso­lines near­ly dou­bled from 235,000 tons in 1955 to 445,000 in 1975. As the harm­ful health effects of tailpipe-exhaust­ed lead com­pounds became increas­ing­ly appar­ent, leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives, begin­ning in 1975, man­dat­ed the com­plete removal of lead addi­tives from U.S. motor fuels by year-end 1991. Dr. Sin­felt’s research on alter­nate petro­le­um con­ver­sion chemistries allowed refin­ers to remove lead alkyls from gaso­line years before the man­dat­ed dead­line. Appli­ca­tion of nov­el, high­ly active and selec­tive bimetal­lic clus­ter cat­a­lyst sys­tems he invent­ed and cham­pi­oned made it pos­si­ble to pro­duce high-octane motor gaso­line with­out the use of lead addi­tives.

Dr. Sinfelt’s dis­tinc­tive research method­ol­o­gy empha­sized entire­ly new con­cepts in the under­stand­ing and use of cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als con­tain­ing bimetal­lic clus­ters. Ear­li­er work on met­al alloys empha­sized the rela­tion between cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance of a met­al and its elec­tron band struc­ture. How­ev­er, lit­tle atten­tion had been paid to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cat­alyt­i­cal­ly influ­enc­ing the selec­tiv­i­ty of chem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions (prod­uct selec­tiv­i­ties). One of Dr. Sinfelt’s most impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies, achieved through in-depth stud­ies on bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts, con­cerns con­trol of chem­i­cal reac­tion selec­tiv­i­ty. He dis­cov­ered that it is, in fact, pos­si­ble to cat­alyze one type of chem­i­cal reac­tion in pref­er­ence to oth­er reac­tions that are them­selves ther­mo­dy­nam­i­cal­ly favor­able. He clear­ly showed that bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts could be tai­lored to effec­tive­ly reduce unde­sir­able com­pet­ing reac­tions, and thus con­trol the kinet­ic speci­fici­ty of sur­face reac­tions. This made pos­si­ble the eco­nom­i­cal con­ver­sion of low octane num­ber mol­e­cules to ones with high octane num­bers. The pub­lic ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from the envi­ron­men­tal improve­ments due to lead-free gaso­line, and motorists did not pay a hugh price for it.

While Dr. Sinfelt’s research has made far-reach­ing con­tri­bu­tions to our under­stand­ing of hydro­car­bon con­ver­sion process­es, the prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits of his research are equal­ly pro­found. The appli­ca­tion of bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts in petro­le­um refin­ing was cru­cial to mak­ing high-octane “lead-free” motor fuels wide­ly avail­able. Today, bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts have replaced tra­di­tion­al cat­a­lysts in cat­alyt­ic reform­ing (the major com­mer­cial process used in increas­ing the octane rat­ing of motor fuels) allow­ing there­by elim­i­na­tion of lead-based, octane improv­ing addi­tives. Dr. Sin­felt is the inven­tor both of a Pt-Ir cat­a­lyst that has been wide­ly used in cat­alyt­ic reform­ing and of a staged reform­ing process that has also found wide appli­ca­tion. The lat­ter uses two dif­fer­ent bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts in sep­a­rate reac­tors to opti­mize per­for­mance. The clas­sic work of Sin­felt on the kinet­ics of cat­alyt­ic reform­ing reac­tions in the late 1950’s and ear­ly 1960’s pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for these impor­tant indus­tri­al advances.

In addi­tion to elim­i­nat­ing the haz­ard of lead in gaso­line, Sinfelt’s work enabled the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of mul­ti-metal­lic cat­a­lysts for the exhaust sys­tems of auto­mo­biles to decrease the emis­sion of pol­lu­tants such as car­bon monox­ide, unburned hydro­car­bons and nitro­gen oxides. The cat­a­lysts com­mon­ly used today con­tain a com­bi­na­tion of met­als; i.e., they are bi-metal­lic or tri-metal­lic. These cat­a­lysts, like reform­ing cat­a­lysts, per­form bet­ter when more than one metal­lic ele­ment is present. Cur­rent exhaust cat­a­lyst sys­tems are based on Sinfelt’s ground break­ing dis­cov­er­ies. Final­ly, since these cat­a­lysts are poi­soned by lead, its removal from gaso­line made the appli­ca­tion of auto exhaust cat­a­lysts tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble.

The basic stud­ies of Dr. Sin­felt on bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts gen­er­at­ed much inter­est in the field and called atten­tion to their impor­tance for cat­alyt­ic reform­ing and for the pro­duc­tion of lead-free gaso­line. The dis­cov­ery was first report­ed in two U. S. Patents to Sin­felt et al. (3,442,973, which issued in 1969 and 3,617,518, which issued in 1971) and in two papers in the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis 24, 283 (1972) and 29, 308 (1973). These ear­ly pub­li­ca­tions stim­u­lat­ed much inter­est in bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts as a major area of research that is still flour­ish­ing. For these con­tri­bu­tions to the lead phase-down in the Unit­ed States, Dr. Sin­felt was award­ed the Nation­al Medal of Sci­ence by the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States in 1979 and the pres­ti­gious Perkin Medal in 1984. His is among the most impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions enabling the world­wide reduc­tion of envi­ron­men­tal lead and the elim­i­na­tion of the asso­ci­at­ed risks to human health.

In a trib­ute to John Sin­felt in I&EC, 42 (2003) 1537, Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart com­ments, “His impact has been unique­ly impor­tant because John com­bined the inven­tive­ness required for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery with the abil­i­ty to engi­neer his work to many suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tions in indus­try. John suc­ceed­ed though repeat­ed sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies and engi­neer­ing appli­ca­tions, with­out ever preach­ing … John man­aged to become a role mod­el to those who prac­tice cat­alyt­ic sci­ence, not only in the secre­tive indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment but also in uni­ver­si­ties world­wide … The lega­cy of John Sin­felt is his unshak­able belief in chem­i­cal kinet­ics to advance cat­alyt­ic sci­ence and engi­neer­ing. John’s impact on the field exceeds by much the impact of his own sci­en­tif­ic and engi­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions.”
 
Con­tributed by Gary McVick­er and John Armor

Her­man Pines was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1902. After earn­ing his degree at the École Supérieure de Chimie in Lyon, France, he came to the U.S. in 1928. He was the clos­est asso­ciate of Vladimir Niko­layevitch Ipati­eff from the day they met in 1930, until Ipati­ef­f’s death in 1952. Ipati­eff, who was 35 years old­er than Pines, then held two jobs: he was an employ­ee of Uni­ver­sal Oil Prod­ucts (UOP) in Des Plaines and a research pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. As a con­se­quence of the close inter­ac­tion of these two devot­ed sci­en­tists, Her­man Pines, an employ­ee at UOP, became involved in Ipati­ef­f’s research at North­west­ern. What start­ed spon­ta­neous­ly and unof­fi­cial­ly, was for­mal­ized in 1941, when Her­man was appoint­ed Research Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern, with the stip­u­la­tion that he should spend his Wednes­days work­ing here. This appoint­ment coin­cid­ed with the relo­ca­tion of Ipati­ef­f’s lab from the base­ment of Uni­ver­si­ty Hall to the new­ly erect­ed Tech­no­log­i­cal Insti­tute.

One of the first actions of this new pro­fes­sor was to write, with Ipati­eff, a mem­o­ran­dum to the Chem­istry Depart­ment propos­ing the cre­ation of a Catal­y­sis Teach­ing and High Pres­sure Lab­o­ra­to­ry. This doc­u­ment was dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 29, 1941, but it was not until 1947 that the Catal­y­sis Lab offi­cial­ly opened in the Tech­no­log­i­cal Insti­tute. A spe­cial High Pres­sure Lab­o­ra­to­ry was built in 1952 and offi­cial­ly ded­i­cat­ed August 14, 1953, in the pres­ence of the Pres­i­dents of North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty and of UOP. Pro­fes­sor Sir Hugh Tay­lor of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty gave a lec­ture on catal­y­sis for the occa­sion. Short­ly there­after, a bronze plaque hon­or­ing Vladimir N. Ipati­eff was mount­ed over the entrance of the High Pres­sure Lab; it is now locat­ed in the recep­tion area of the Catal­y­sis Cen­ter.

Mean­while, Her­man Pines had been pro­mot­ed, in 1951, to the rank of Asso­ciate Research Pro­fes­sor; after Ipati­ef­f’s death, in 1952, he became the first V.N. Ipati­eff Pro­fes­sor of Organ­ic Chem­istry. On Jan­u­ary 1, 1953, he left UOP and began offi­cial­ly as a full-time pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern.

Only a few of the out­stand­ing sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ments of Her­man Pines can be men­tioned here; it is not an over­state­ment to say that his work rev­o­lu­tion­ized the gen­er­al under­stand­ing of chem­istry, in par­tic­u­lar the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons inter­act­ing with strong acids.

An unchal­lenged dog­ma of the chem­istry of the 1930’s was that paraf­fins would not react with any­thing at low tem­per­a­ture; even the name of this class of com­pounds, “parum affi­nis,” was based on this assumed lack of reac­tiv­i­ty. It must have been quite a shock to the sci­en­tists of those days, when Pines and Ipati­eff showed, in 1932, that in the pres­ence of a strong acid the paraf­fin iso-butane would react, even at ‑35 ºC, with olefins. This was the basis of the alky­la­tion process, patent­ed in 1938 and indus­tri­al­ly devel­oped soon after. Its most spec­tac­u­lar appli­ca­tion is the syn­the­sis of iso-octane from n‑butene and iso-butane. Iso-octane improves the qual­i­ty of gaso­line and air­plane fuel; it played a deci­sive role in the vic­to­ry of the Roy­al Air Force dur­ing the Bat­tle of Britain in 1941. The catal­y­sis of con­vert­ing paraf­fins to isoparaf­fins is, of course, one of the cor­ner­stone of the petro­le­um indus­try.

The alky­la­tion process was not dis­cov­ered by acci­dent. It was the pin­na­cle of research that start­ed with an obser­va­tion that puz­zled Her­man Pines in 1930. At that time he was work­ing in the ana­lyt­i­cal lab of UOP; his task was to vig­or­ous­ly shake petro­le­um frac­tions with con­cen­trat­ed sul­fu­ric acid in a cal­i­brat­ed glass cylin­der and to deter­mine how much of the oil dis­solved in the aque­ous acid phase. It was known that only unsat­u­rat­ed hydro­car­bons would be dis­solved in the acid; this exper­i­ment of shak­ing the petro­le­um and read­ing the menis­cus was the stan­dard pro­ce­dure to deter­mine how many unsat­u­rat­ed prod­ucts were present in a petro­le­um frac­tion. Her­man observed, how­ev­er, that after a few hours the phase bound­ary between oil and acid had shift­ed again: more oil was formed-oil that would not dis­solve in the aque­ous phase. Appar­ent­ly paraf­fins had been formed from olefins; Her­man con­clud­ed that this process required the simul­ta­ne­ous for­ma­tion of a high­ly unsat­u­rat­ed coprod­uct which remained dis­solved in the aque­ous phase. They called this process “con­junct poly­mer­iza­tion,” and years lat­er ana­lyt­i­cal meth­ods were found which per­mit­ted iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of this unsat­u­rat­ed coprod­uct as a mix­ture of sub­sti­tut­ed cyclopen­ta­di­enes. The step which led from this ear­ly obser­va­tion to the alky­la­tion process was lat­er described by Her­man:

“On a hunch we thought that paraf­fins might even react with olefins in the pres­ence of acids; we there­fore intro­duced a stream of eth­yl­ene and hydro­gen chlo­ride to a stirred mix­ture of the pen­tanes and AlCl₃. We observed that the eth­yl­ene was absorbed and that the hydro­car­bons recov­ered from the reac­tion con­sist­ed of sat­u­rat­ed hydro­car­bons only, an indi­ca­tion that eth­yl­ene must have react­ed with the pen­tanes.”

On this basis, Her­man Pines and Vladimir Ipati­eff devel­oped the new chem­istry of acid cat­alyzed reac­tions; it formed the cor­ner­stone of their sci­en­tif­ic work and was brought to its present beau­ty by Her­man in his years at North­west­ern. Major dis­cov­er­ies led to new process­es for the iso­mer­iza­tion of paraf­fins and the alky­la­tion of aro­mat­ic com­pounds, but also to base cat­alyzed organ­ic reac­tions. Two hun­dred and fifty pub­li­ca­tions in the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, one hun­dred and forty-five U.S. patents and the book “The Chem­istry of Cat­alyt­ic Hydro­car­bon Con­ver­sions” demon­strate the wealth of Her­man’s sci­en­tif­ic lega­cy. The forty-one grad­u­ate stu­dents and thir­ty-three post­doc­tor­al fel­lows who per­formed research in his lab helped car­ry his sci­en­tif­ic mes­sage to the world. As U.S. edi­tor of Advances in Catal­y­sis, he keen­ly looked for and crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ed new con­cepts of catal­y­sis, and assured that their orig­i­na­tors described them care­ful­ly to the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. In 1957 he was chair­man of the Chica­go Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, in 1960 chair­man of the Gor­don Con­fer­ence of Catal­y­sis. He received three awards from the ACS, an hon­orary degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lyon and invi­ta­tions to lec­ture and advise in Israel, Brazil, Venezuela, Argenti­na, Poland, Czecho­slo­va­kia and Spain.

The Catal­y­sis Cen­ter remained his sci­en­tif­ic home. He rarely missed a sem­i­nar and often asked crit­i­cal ques­tions. He could be quite sharp when speak­ers used catal­y­sis only as a buzz­word for the intro­duc­tion of their lec­tures and spoke about work of rather ques­tion­able rel­e­vance to “real” catal­y­sis. Although he could be crit­i­cal, he was nev­er insen­si­tive; his gen­tle and friend­ly nature made it quite impos­si­ble for him to do any harm to any­one. While there is a unan­i­mous con­sen­sus that he was one of the tow­er­ing sci­en­tists of this cen­tu­ry, he always remained very mod­est; when his trend­set­ting dis­cov­er­ies of the 1930’s were men­tioned, he always referred them to Ipati­eff. He worked assid­u­ous­ly his entire life, bring­ing his last book to com­ple­tion at the age of nine­ty. Future gen­er­a­tions can learn from his exam­ple how rev­o­lu­tion­ary dis­cov­er­ies arise from sharp obser­va­tions by an inves­ti­gat­ing mind. Her­man Pines passed away on April 10, 1996.
 
Con­tributed by Wolf­gang Sachtler

Dur­ing a 60-year career in indus­try and acad­e­mia, Heinz con­tributed to the inven­tion and devel­op­ment of 14 com­mer­cial fos­sil fuel process­es, received 75 patents and was the author of more than a hun­dred pub­li­ca­tions. Among his inven­tions was a process for con­vert­ing methanol to gaso­line. At his death, he was a dis­tin­guished sci­en­tist in the Wash­ing­ton office of LBNL. Dur­ing the peri­od 2001 to 2004, he served as a man­ag­er of the Wash­ing­ton Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) and as pres­i­dent of its Retired Chemists Group. After retire­ment from a career in indus­try, Heinz was a long-time lec­tur­er in the Col­lege of Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, and a chem­istry researcher at Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Born in Berlin, Ger­many, he attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty and Tech­nis­che Hochschule in Berlin. When his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion was reject­ed because he was Jew­ish, he made his way to Basel, Switzer­land, where he received his PhD in phys­i­cal chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel, before com­ing to the Unit­ed States in 1938. He became a U.S. cit­i­zen in 1944. He worked for sev­er­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies in Louisiana and Texas and won a post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship at the then-Carnegie Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, now Carnegie-Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty. The fel­low­ship was fund­ed by the gov­ern­ment of the Domini­can Repub­lic and involved research into ethanol, which was made from the Domini­can Repub­lic’s pri­ma­ry cash crop, sug­ar cane.

He pub­lished more than 150 papers and over 50 patents in catal­y­sis and petro­le­um chem­istry, most­ly while work­ing for Houdry Process Corp., the MW Kel­logg Co. as direc­tor of chem­i­cal and engi­neer­ing research, and the Mobil Research and Devel­op­ment Co. as man­ag­er of catal­y­sis research. Dur­ing those years he active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the research and devel­op­ment of 14 com­mer­cial process­es, includ­ing the process for con­vert­ing methanol to gaso­line.

After retir­ing from indus­try in 1978, he joined the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry as a researcher and became a lec­tur­er in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at UC Berke­ley. His research involved coal gasi­fi­ca­tion, cat­alyt­ic coal liq­ue­fac­tion, hydro­den­i­tri­fi­ca­tion, nitro­gen oxide emis­sion con­trol and the devel­op­ment of a spe­cial cat­a­lyst that enables methane, the major com­po­nent of nat­ur­al gas, to be used to make petro­chem­i­cals. The research team he led invent­ed and patent­ed a process known as cat­alyt­ic oxy­de­hy­dro­gena­tion.

He was a co-founder of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club, the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca and the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Catal­y­sis, serv­ing as its pres­i­dent from 1956 to 1960. He was the founder of Catal­y­sis Reviews, and worked as its edi­tor for 20 years. He also was Con­sult­ing Edi­tor for over 90 books in the Chem­i­cal Indus­tries Series, pub­lished by Mar­cel Dekker, Inc.

He received many hon­ors, among them elec­tion to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing , the Houdry Award of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Mur­phree Award of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the H.H. Lowry Award pre­sent­ed for research he pur­sued in his sev­en­ties, and a Dis­tin­guished Scientist/Engineer award of the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. In addi­tion, he was elect­ed a mem­ber of the Span­ish Coun­cil for Sci­en­tif­ic Research for his sup­port in found­ing its Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and Petro­chem­istry.

Heinz Heine­mann passed away on Nov. 23, 2005 of pneu­mo­nia. He was 92.
 
Con­tributed by http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/Publications/news/fall2005/heinz_obit.html

One of the first improve­ments in petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion was the process devel­oped by Eugene Houdry for “crack­ing” petro­le­um mol­e­cules into the short­er ones that con­sti­tute gaso­line. (Ear­li­er com­mer­cial process­es for crack­ing petro­le­um relied instead on heat.)

Eugene Houdry (1892–1962) obtained a degree in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing in his native France before join­ing the fam­i­ly met­al­work­ing busi­ness in 1911. After he served in the tank corps in World War I—for which he received hon­ors for extra­or­di­nary hero­ism in battle—he pur­sued his inter­est in auto­mo­biles (espe­cial­ly race cars) and their engines. On a trip to the Unit­ed States he vis­it­ed the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny fac­to­ry and attend­ed the Indi­anapo­lis 500 race. His inter­est soon nar­rowed to improved fuels. Because France pro­duced lit­tle petroleum—and the world sup­ply was thought to have near­ly run out—Houdry, like many oth­er chemists and engi­neers, searched for a method to make gaso­line from France’s plen­ti­ful lig­nite (brown coal). After test­ing hun­dreds of cat­a­lysts to effect the hoped-for mol­e­c­u­lar rearrange­ment, Houdry began work­ing with sil­i­ca-alu­mi­na and changed his feed­stock from lig­nite to heavy liq­uid tars. By 1930 he had pro­duced small sam­ples of gaso­line that showed promise as a motor fuel.

In the ear­ly 1930s Houdry col­lab­o­rat­ed with two Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies, Socony Vac­u­um and Sun Oil, to build pilot plants. Oil com­pa­nies that did not want to resort to the new addi­tive tetraethyl lead were eager­ly look­ing for oth­er means to increase octane lev­els in gaso­line. In 1937 Sun Oil opened a full-scale Houdry unit at its refin­ery in Mar­cus Hook, Penn­syl­va­nia, to pro­duce high-octane Nu-Blue Suno­co gaso­line. By 1942, 14 Houdry fixed-bed cat­alyt­ic units were bear­ing the unan­tic­i­pat­ed bur­den of pro­duc­ing high-octane avi­a­tion gaso­line for the armed forces.

(One lim­i­ta­tion of the process was that it deposit­ed coke on the cat­a­lyst, which required that the unit be shut down while the coke was burned off in a regen­er­a­tion cycle. War­ren K. Lewis and Edwin R. Gilliland of the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, who were hired as con­sul­tants to Stan­dard Oil Com­pa­ny of New Jer­sey [now Exxon­Mo­bil], final­ly solved this prob­lem with great inge­nu­ity and effort. They devel­oped the “mov­ing bed” cat­alyt­ic con­vert­er, in which the cat­a­lyst was itself cir­cu­lat­ed between two enor­mous ves­sels, the reac­tor and the regen­er­a­tor.)

Houdry con­tin­ued his work with cat­a­lysts and became par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ed with the cat­alyt­ic role of enzymes in the human body and the changes in enzyme-assist­ed process­es caused by can­cer. About 1950, when the results of ear­ly stud­ies of smog in Los Ange­les were pub­lished, Houdry became con­cerned about the role of auto­mo­bile exhaust in air pol­lu­tion and found­ed a spe­cial com­pa­ny, Oxy-Cat­a­lyst, to devel­op cat­alyt­ic con­vert­ers for gaso­line engines—an idea ahead of its time. But until lead could be elim­i­nat­ed from gaso­line (lead was intro­duced in the 1920s to raise octane lev­els), it poi­soned any cat­a­lyst.

The fol­low­ing tak­en from Chem­i­cal Her­itage Foun­da­tions Oth­mer Library Cat­a­log
http://othmerlib.chemheritage.org/search/dArchival+Materials./darchival+materials/-5,-1,0,B/frameset&FF=darchival+materials&5„16.

Eugene Houdry was born on April 18, 1892 in France. In 1911 he received a degree in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing. He worked for his fam­i­ly’s met­al work­ing busi­ness. In 1930, he moved to the U.S. wher he rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pro­duc­tion of gaso­line by devel­op­ing a process for crack­ing low-grade fuel into high test gaso­line. Dur­ing WWII, he devel­oped a sin­gle-step butane dehy­dro­gena­tion process for pro­duc­ing syn­thet­ic rub­ber. After WWII, he found­ed a com­pa­ny enti­tled Oxy-Cat­a­lyst, and shift­ed his focus to reduc­ing health risks asso­ci­at­ed with auto­mo­bile exhaust. He patent­ed the cat­alyt­ic muf­fler for auto­mo­biles in 1962. He died on July 18, 1962. He was induct­ed into the Nation­al Inven­tor’s Hall of Fame in 1990.
 
Con­tributed by A. Mills and Chem­i­cal Her­itage (http://www.chemheritage.org/classroom/chemach/petroleum/houdry.html)

Eric Der­ouane died on 17th March 2008 from a heart attack in his home in Luz, Lagos, Por­tu­gal. With him, the Catal­y­sis Com­mu­ni­ty has lost one of its strongest and bril­liant sci­en­tists.

Born on 4th July 1944 at Péruwelz (Hain­aut), Bel­gium, Eric Der­ouane obtained a Licence degree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège, B (1965), a Mas­ter of Arts (MA) degree in Chem­istry in Prof. J. Turkevich’s lab­o­ra­to­ry at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, USA (1966) and a Doc­tor­at ès Sci­ences (PhD) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège, B (1968), includ­ing a one year (1966–1967) in France at the “Ser­vice de Physique du Solide et de Réso­nance Mag­né­tique, CEN Saclay” in Prof. A. Abragam’s lab­o­ra­to­ry. He stayed a year (1969–1970) in USA at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty as vis­it­ing Schol­ar in Prof. M. Boudart’s lab­o­ra­to­ry. He became Research Assis­tant of the “Fonds Nation­al de la Recherche Sci­en­tifique” (FNRS) and Lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège, B (1969–1973). In 1973, he was appoint­ed Pro­fes­sor at the “Fac­ultés Uni­ver­si­taires Notre-Dame de la Paix” (FUNDP) in Namur, B, where he cre­at­ed the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis, of which he remained Direc­tor until 1995. He was on sab­bat­i­cal leaves in 1979 as Research Fel­low with J. Sin­felt at Exxon Res. & Devel­op. Corp., Lin­den, USA, and in 1982–84 as Research Sci­en­tist, Head of Explorato­ry Catal­y­sis Syn­the­sis Group at Mobil Res. & Devel­op. Corp., Cen­tral Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Prince­ton, USA. In 1995, he became Full Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool and was appoint­ed Direc­tor of the Lev­er­hulme Cen­tre for Inno­v­a­tive Catal­y­sis (LCIC). In 2003, he obtained the Gul­benkian Pro­fes­sor­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Algarve in Faro, P, where he was Direc­tor of the Chem­i­cal Research Cen­tre. He became lat­er Invit­ed Pro­fes­sor at the “Insti­tu­to Supe­ri­or Tec­ni­co” (IST) of the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Lis­bon, where he had exten­sive coop­er­a­tion with the group led by Prof. F. Ramôa Ribeiro.

His main fields of inves­ti­ga­tion dealt with catal­y­sis over zeo­lites in gen­er­al, sup­port­ed met­als, nov­el mate­ri­als and mixed oxides in par­tic­u­lar, and alka­ne upgrad­ing and fine chem­i­cals more specif­i­cal­ly. One of Eric’s most strik­ing qual­i­ties was his acute inter­est for every new sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and for indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions of his find­ings.

Eric Der­ouane had an unusu­al work­ing effi­cien­cy. He had a high intel­lec­tu­al mobil­i­ty and was always attract­ed by new mate­ri­als and new con­cepts. Among them, one can men­tion ZSM‑5/MFI new zeo­lite in the ear­ly 70s, lead­ing to a 30 year col­lab­o­ra­tion with J.C. Védrine, cuprate-type super­con­duc­tors, con­fine­ment effect and mol­e­c­u­lar traf­fic con­trol in zeolitic mate­ri­als. He also stud­ied reac­tion mech­a­nisms using iso­topic labelling and in-situ MAS-NMR in the 80s, com­bi­na­to­r­i­al catal­y­sis and high through­put tech­nol­o­gy in the late 90s.

Dur­ing his 20 years of ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Namur, Eric Der­ouane devel­oped new con­cepts, which had an impor­tant impact on the catal­y­sis and zeo­lite com­mu­ni­ties. In 1986, he was elect­ed Head of the Chem­istry Depart­ment. He then embarked upon an impres­sive re-struc­tur­ing pro­gramme to improve its effi­cien­cy. The mod­el, which he ini­ti­at­ed, is still in ser­vice today. His lab­o­ra­to­ry was rec­og­nized as an out­stand­ing school of sci­en­tif­ic research and edu­ca­tion in catal­y­sis.

Very ear­ly, Eric Der­ouane real­ized the impor­tance of inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty, which lead him to play a key role in the cre­ation of the Insti­tute for Stud­ies in Inter­face Sci­ences (ISIS) at Namur in 1987, which gath­ered lab­o­ra­to­ries of physics and chem­istry for 20 years. Eric Der­ouane also paid heed to tech­no­log­i­cal trans­fer to indus­tries. After his expe­ri­ence gained through his sab­bat­i­cal posi­tions at Exxon and at Mobil, he devel­oped many col­lab­o­ra­tions with indus­tri­al part­ners and served as con­sul­tant.

At Liv­er­pool, the aim of the LCIC was to pro­mote cre­ative fun­da­men­tal cat­alyt­ic sci­ence and often to take-up indus­tri­al chal­lenges. Eric Der­ouane defined inno­va­tion as “the cre­ation of a new or bet­ter prod­uct or process, imply­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, use­ful­ness, and appli­ca­tion”. Towards this end, the LCIC had indus­tri­al affil­i­ates as part­ners. Under his lead­er­ship the LCIC became the largest catal­y­sis cen­tre in the UK.and a cen­tre of sci­en­tif­ic exchanges and col­lab­o­ra­tions. Eric Der­ouane estab­lished links with many UK and inter­na­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ries. Eric Der­ouane cre­at­ed in 1997 an Euro­pean Asso­ci­at­ed Lab­o­ra­to­ry “Lab­o­ra­to­ry for high speci­fici­ty catal­y­sis” between LCIC/University of Liv­er­pool and Insti­tut de Recherch­es sur la Catal­yse, Lyon, F/CNRS.

In 1999, he co-found­ed with Prof. S. Roberts the spin-off Liv­er­pool-based com­pa­ny “Sty­la­cats”, of which he became direc­tor. He pro­vid­ed wise sug­ges­tions and ideas, which lead the com­pa­ny to pio­neer new tech­nolo­gies, in par­tic­u­lar cat­a­lysts for asym­met­ric hydro­gena­tion, microwave-induced reac­tions and enzyme mimet­ics.

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Faro, Eric Der­ouane devel­oped a research project, joint­ly with the Insti­tu­to Tec­ni­co de Lis­boa, on Friedel-Crafts reac­tions. He also col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly on var­i­ous research projects with Prof. F. Ramôa Ribeiro’s zeo­lite group of the Insti­tu­to Supe­ri­or Tec­ni­co of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lis­bon.

Eric Der­ouane co-authored over 400 sci­en­tif­ic papers, 11 books and 61 patents.
Eric Der­ouane also con­tributed to the devel­op­ment and strength­en­ing of the euro­pean catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. He cre­at­ed in 1975 the Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion in Catal­y­sis (EUROCAT), a con­sor­tium of Euro­pean lab­o­ra­to­ries under the aus­pices of the Coun­cil of Europe and pro­mot­ed stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of cat­a­lysts: Euro-Pt1 to ‑Pt4, Euro-Ni1 & ‑Ni2, Euro­cat zeo­lite, Euro­cat oxides, etc. This Euro­cat group paved the way to the cre­ation of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) and of the François Gault lec­ture­ship. He was elect­ed Pres­i­dent of EFCATS in 1995 for two years.

He became Edi­tor-in-chief of J. Mol. Catal. in 1982 and was mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Boards of sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals and mem­ber of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tees of many con­gress­es and col­lo­quia. He co-orga­nized sev­er­al con­gress­es him­self, in par­tic­u­lar with F. Lemos and F. Ramôa Ribeiro in Por­tu­gal sev­er­al NATO Advanced Stud­ies Insti­tutes on top­ics includ­ing “the con­ver­sion of light alka­nes”, “com­bi­na­to­r­i­al catal­y­sis and high through­put cat­a­lyst design and test­ing”, “prin­ci­ples and meth­ods for accel­er­at­ed cat­a­lyst design and test­ing” and “sus­tain­able strate­gies for the upgrad­ing of nat­ur­al gas”.

Eric Derouane’s con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis have been recog­nised by many awards and aca­d­e­m­ic hon­ors, includ­ing the Wauters Prize (1964), the Mund Prize (1967) of the “Société Royale de Chimie”, the Stas-Spring Prize (1971) and the Adolphe Wetrems Prize (1975) of the “Académie Royale de Bel­gique”, the Roset­ta Briegel-Bar­ton Lec­tur­ership at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa (1973), the Prize of the “Cer­cle of Alum­ni de la Fon­da­tion Uni­ver­si­taire de Bel­gique” (1980), the Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (1981), the Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship of the Société Chim­ique de France (1993) and the pres­ti­gious Franc­qui Prize, B (1994), the high­est hon­or for all Sci­ences in Bel­gium.

He was made “Offici­er de l’Ordre Léopold” in Bel­gium (1990), cor­re­spond­ing Mem­ber of the “Académie Royale des Sci­ences, des Let­tres et des Beaux Arts de Bel­gique” (1991), mem­ber of the “New York Acad­e­my of Sci­ences” and Asso­ciate Mem­ber of the “Euro­pean Acad­e­my of Arts, Sci­ences and Human­i­ties”. He was con­ferred Doc­tor Hon­oris Causa, Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Lis­bon (1996) Eric Der­ouane attract­ed many stu­dents and for­eign schol­ars to his lab­o­ra­to­ries in Namur, Liv­er­pool and Faro. His ener­gy, his clear mind and his broad knowl­edge impressed his stu­dents, researchers and col­leagues. He was an out­stand­ing and demand­ing pro­fes­sor, always ready to share his knowl­edge with his stu­dents. His cours­es were always clear, high­ly struc­tured and eas­i­ly under­stand­able. Many of his for­mer stu­dents and post-docs occu­py today promi­nent posi­tions in uni­ver­si­ties and indus­tries. All of them will remem­ber his bril­liant and rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic approach, and no doubt they all will great­ly miss him.
 
Con­tributed by
Jacques C. Védrine and Michel Che, Paris
Fer­nan­do Ramôa Ribeiro, Lis­boa
Jian­liang Xiao, Liv­er­pool
Bao-Lian Su, Namur
23 April 2008

, Age 90 of Hockessin, DE died April 28, 2004 at Chris­tiana Hos­pi­tal in Newark. He was born March 20, 1914 in Saska­toon, Saskatchewan, CN and became a U.S. cit­i­zen in 1942. He was a res­i­dent of Swarth­more, PA for 28 years; Bethes­da, MD for 12 years; and Newark and Hockessin, DE for 20 years.

Dr. Mills was a chemist for over 40 years, mak­ing major con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al cat­alyt­ic process­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly hydro­car­bon fuels and petro­chem­i­cals includ­ing DABCO for polyurethanes. He was exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware until 1984; chief of the Coal Divi­sion Bureau of Mines; direc­tor of the Office of Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Fos­sil Ener­gy at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy in Wash­ing­ton, DC; and direc­tor of research at Houdry Process Cor­po­ra­tion (Air Prod­ucts) in Mar­cus Hook, PA.

He received the Hen­ry H. Storch Award from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety; the Pio­neer Award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chemists; and the E.V. Mur­phree Award in chem­istry from Exxon Mobil Research. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing. He was author and
co-author of 143 arti­cles in tech­ni­cal pub­li­ca­tions and held 60 U.S. patents. Dr. Mills was pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca from 1969–73. He served as chair­man of both, the Fuels Divi­sion, ACS and the Petro­le­um Division,ACS at dif­fer­ent times. He was chair­man of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club dur­ing the orga­ni­za­tion of the First Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis (Philadel­phia, 1954–56). Final­ly he and his work were great­ly influ­enced by his close coop­er­a­tion with Eugene Houdry.

He received a BS and an MS from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan and a PhD from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, where he stud­ied with Nobel Prize win­ner Harold Urey.
 
Con­tributed by Thanks to The News Jour­nal (Delaware)