I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Johannes A. Lercher of the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, spon­sored by John­son Matthey and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2011 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Society.An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. Pro­fes­sor Lercher will present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Pro­fes­sor Lercher is being rec­og­nized for his ground-break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to our under­stand­ing of the inter­ac­tions and trans­for­ma­tions of mol­e­cules on sol­id cat­a­lysts through ele­gant com­bi­na­tions of physic­o­chem­i­cal and kinet­ic analy­ses. His stud­ies of the ele­men­tary in mol­e­c­u­lar trans­port through porous media and the result­ing insights into the design of solids to manip­u­late these steps have led to a suc­cess­ful syn­the­sis of hier­ar­chic mate­ri­als able to dis­crim­i­nate mol­e­cules on the basis of the vol­ume defined by their rota­tion in the gas space. His stud­ies of the into the struc­ture and ther­mo­dy­nam­ic prop­er­ties of hydro­car­bons adsorbed with­in zeo­lite voids and on polar sur­faces led to effi­cient cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive acti­va­tion of organ­ic mol­e­cules. The con­cepts and learn­ings devel­oped have stim­u­lat­ed sig­nif­i­cant exper­i­men­tal and the­o­ret­i­cal stud­ies in these areas and the devel­op­ment of nov­el cat­alyt­ic chemistries for alka­ne acti­va­tion. These chemistries include the func­tion­al­iza­tion of methane to methyl chlo­ride on chlo­ride sur­faces, the oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of ethane to ethene on sup­port­ed molten chlo­rides, the sta­ble and selec­tive alky­la­tion of isobu­tane with lin­ear butenes on acidic zeo­lites, and the acti­va­tion and crack­ing of branched alka­nes by zeo­lites con­tain­ing acces­si­ble lan­thanum cations at ambi­ent tem­per­a­tures.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor James A. Dumesic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Michel Boudart for Advances in Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 22nd North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (Detroit, June 2011) and at Europacat X (Glas­gow, August 2011).

This Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and the prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. It is meant to rec­og­nize indi­vid­u­als who bring togeth­er the rig­or and the inter­na­tion­al impact that exem­pli­fies the accom­plish­ments and the career of Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart.

Pro­fes­sor Dumesic is being specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing work on the trans­for­ma­tion of bio­mass-derived mol­e­cules to chem­i­cals and fuels. In a com­bi­na­tion of dis­cov­ery and refine­ment, dri­ven by cat­alyt­ic insight that is his hall­mark, Dumesic and his cowork­ers used ther­mo­dy­nam­ic and kinet­ic con­sid­er­a­tions, com­bined with cat­a­lyst opti­miza­tion to devel­op a one-step aque­ous phase reform­ing route from sug­ars and oth­er bio­mass-derived oxy­genates to hydro­gen and/or alka­nes. The work was guid­ed by mech­a­nis­tic insights about the rel­a­tive rates of C‑C cleav­age, lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of H2 and CO/CO2, and C‑O cleav­age, which forms alkyl moi­eties, and led to the opti­miza­tion of aque­ous phase reform­ing for either H2 or alka­ne prod­ucts. His stud­ies elu­ci­dat­ed cat­a­lysts and reac­tion con­di­tions for poly­ol reform­ing that favor C‑C cleav­age with min­i­mal water-gas shift, there­by allow­ing glyc­erol reform­ing and Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis to occur with­in a sin­gle reac­tor. These dis­cov­er­ies were quick­ly fol­lowed by two new and inno­v­a­tive cat­alyt­ic con­ver­sion process­es. One approach employs a cas­cade of reac­tors, each designed to sequen­tial­ly attack spe­cif­ic func­tion­al groups; these reac­tions remove oxy­gen, achieve car­bon-car­bon bond syn­the­sis, and steer the final upgrad­ing steps towards the desired fuel mol­e­cules. These stud­ies have shown how met­al func­tions, mod­er­at­ed by anoth­er met­al, can con­vert sug­ars and poly­ols to mono-func­tion­al inter­me­di­ates, such as ketones, alco­hols, and car­boxylic acids, by bal­anc­ing the rates of C‑C and C‑O cleav­age. This approach led to strate­gies to form new C‑C bonds via cou­pling of these mono-func­tion­al inter­me­di­ates to adjust chain length, as in the case of ketoniza­tion catal­y­sis of car­boxylic acids on mixed oxides and sub­se­quent aldol-con­den­sa­tion to react ketones and alco­hols on sol­id bases. Anoth­er nov­el approach involved γ‑gam­ma-valero­lac­tone decar­boxy­la­tion to butene and its oligomers and, in relat­ed work, the use of met­al-acid bifunc­tion­al cat­a­lysts to con­vert valero­lac­tone to C9 ketones by cou­pling ring-open­ing and C=C bond hydro­gena­tion with the ketoniza­tion of result­ing pen­tanoic acid.

This body of work has rede­fined the fron­tiers of fun­da­men­tal catal­y­sis while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly address­ing the crit­i­cal world­wide needs for renew­able ener­gy sources and epit­o­mizes the con­flu­ence of ele­gance and rel­e­vance in catal­y­sis that the Boudart Award intends to rec­og­nize.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
 
Aveli­no Cor­ma Canos
Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties

Pro­fes­sor Bert Weck­huy­sen of the Debye Insti­tute for Nano­ma­te­ri­als Sci­ence of Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty (The Nether­lands) is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Davi­son oper­at­ing seg­ment of W.R. Grace & Co. and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 22nd North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Detroit, Michi­gan on June 5–10, 2011. Pro­fes­sor Weck­huy­sen will present a ple­nary lec­ture dur­ing this con­fer­ence.

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, pro­pos­al of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Pro­fes­sor Weck­huy­sen is being rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing devel­op­ment and use of in-situ spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods to probe solids at the microm­e­ter and nanome­ter scale dur­ing their acti­va­tion and their func­tion as cat­a­lysts. These stud­ies have led to fun­da­men­tal insights into the dis­tri­b­u­tion of active sites and the mech­a­nism of mol­e­c­u­lar dif­fu­sion and deac­ti­va­tion phe­nom­e­na in zeo­lite and Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch cat­a­lysts. Specif­i­cal­ly, spa­tial het­ero­geneities in activ­i­ty, selec­tiv­i­ty and cok­ing with­in indi­vid­ual ZSM‑5 zeo­lite crys­tals were detect­ed using a nov­el com­bi­na­tion of micro-spec­troscopy and rate data and inter­pret­ed in terms of com­plex but broad­ly applic­a­ble zeo­lite inter­growth mod­els direct­ly rel­e­vant to mol­e­c­u­lar dif­fu­sion and to meso­poros­i­ty gen­er­a­tion dur­ing syn­the­sis. In oth­er stud­ies, X‑ray microscopy com­bined with an in-situ reac­tor led to unprece­dent­ed details of nanoscale process­es involved in Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly as they per­tain to the dynam­ic evo­lu­tion and the cat­alyt­ic rel­e­vance of the var­i­ous inor­gan­ic and organ­ic phas­es formed dur­ing catal­y­sis.

Harold Kung, pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty’s McCormick School of Engi­neer­ing and Applied Sci­ence, will receive the 2011 Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

The award rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing the­o­ret­i­cal, exper­i­men­tal, or devel­op­men­tal research result­ing in the advance­ment of under­stand­ing or appli­ca­tion of catal­y­sis, and the list of win­ners includes the great­est researchers in the field of catal­y­sis.

Kung is a world leader in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis research and the devel­op­ment of nov­el mate­ri­als and process­es. He applies his exper­tise to the crit­i­cal areas of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, renew­able ener­gy and envi­ron­men­tal chem­istry.

Cur­rent­ly Kung and his research group are focused on the syn­the­sis of nov­el nano­ma­te­ri­als for cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tions to min­i­mize ener­gy con­sump­tion and envi­ron­men­tal impact and on new lithi­um-ion bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, such as new forms of elec­trodes for improved elec­tri­cal ener­gy stor­age.

Dur­ing his career Kung has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in var­i­ous areas of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, start­ing with sem­i­nal work that demon­strat­ed the rela­tion­ship between sur­face atom­ic struc­tures of an oxide and its chem­i­cal and cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties. He has led the field in study­ing oxide-based cat­a­lysts for the removal of the atmos­pher­ic pol­lu­tant nitric oxide by reduc­tion with hydro­car­bons in an oxi­diz­ing atmos­phere. More recent­ly, Kung became the first to syn­the­size an inter­nal­ly func­tion­al­ized hol­low nanos­phere that can be used to trap and bind mol­e­cules and met­al com­plex­es.

The award will be pre­sent­ed at the spring meet­ing of the ACS in 2011.
 
This arti­cle was repro­duced from www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/article_753.html.

Chun­shan Song, dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of fuel sci­ence in the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Min­er­al Engi­neer­ing and Direc­tor of EMS Ener­gy Insti­tute at Penn State, received the Hen­ry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chem­istry from Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) at the 240th ACS nation­al meet­ing held in Boston, MA, dur­ing Aug 21–26, 2010. He received this pres­ti­gious award in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to fuel sci­ence espe­cial­ly in the areas of clean fuels, catal­y­sis, and CO2 cap­ture and con­ver­sion research.

The Hen­ry H. Storch Award, co-spon­sored by the Divi­sion of Fuel Chem­istry of the ACS and Else­vi­er Ltd., is giv­en annu­al­ly to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual in the field of fuel sci­ence for an excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion to the research on the chem­istry and uti­liza­tion of hydro­car­bon fuels. Spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to inno­va­tion and nov­el­ty in the use of fuels, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of fuels, and advances in fuel chem­istry that ben­e­fit the pub­lic wel­fare or the envi­ron­ment. The award is the high­est hon­or for research award­ed by the ACS Fuel Chem­istry Divi­sion.

Song was recent­ly named a Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Fuel Sci­ence by Penn State’s Office of the Pres­i­dent. He is also pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Penn State Insti­tutes of Ener­gy and the Envi­ron­ment. He received a BS in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in 1982 from Dalian Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Chi­na, and a MS in 1986 and PhD in 1989 in applied chem­istry from Osa­ka Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan. He worked at the Research Cen­ter of Osa­ka Gas Com­pa­ny in Japan pri­or to join­ing Penn State in Nov 1989.

Song is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for his orig­i­nal and inno­v­a­tive con­tri­bu­tions to clean fuels, catal­y­sis and CO2 cap­ture and con­ver­sion research. His ear­ly research at Penn State on cat­alyt­ic coal liq­ue­fac­tion and the effects of dry­ing coal on coal con­ver­sion at low tem­per­a­tures led to a new way of prepar­ing high­ly active dis­persed cat­a­lysts using water and sul­fide pre­cur­sor. Based on this dis­cov­ery, fur­ther fun­da­men­tal stud­ies using probe mol­e­cules result­ed in two patents for inven­tions on nano-sized ultra-high-sur­face met­al sul­fide cat­a­lysts that have been licensed to indus­try. From his efforts to make bet­ter use of coal-derived aro­mat­ics for val­ue-added chem­i­cals, he has designed shape-selec­tive alky­la­tion cat­a­lysts for syn­the­sis of pre­cur­sors for advanced poly­mers and engi­neer­ing mate­ri­als from naph­tha­lene, which have been patent­ed and licensed to indus­try. He has made major con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of coal-based advanced ther­mal­ly sta­ble jet fuels through his work on fun­da­men­tal chem­istry con­cern­ing the effects of intrin­sic fuel com­po­si­tion and struc­ture on ther­mal degra­da­tion of jet fuels, and his work on mod­el com­pounds stud­ies relat­ed to sta­ble bicyclic struc­tures and hydroaro­mat­ics and their tai­lored pro­duc­tion through catal­y­sis. These devel­op­ments were part of the large, 20 year, U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed jet fuel project led by Harold Schobert at Penn State, which has been scaled up to pilot plant pro­duc­tion. For ultra-clean fuels and fuel cells, Song and his group devised an inno­v­a­tive approach to selec­tive adsorp­tion for remov­ing sul­fur from liq­uid hydro­car­bon fuels over sol­id sur­face with­out using hydro­gen, which has also been licensed to indus­try and already used for mak­ing pro­to­type sys­tems.

His group recent­ly devel­oped a nov­el approach to CO2 cap­ture by “mol­e­c­u­lar-bas­ket sor­bents” con­sist­ing of nanoporous matrix and func­tion­al poly­mers with supe­ri­or capac­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty. In addi­tion, his group devel­oped sul­fur-tol­er­ant and car­bon-resis­tant bimetal­lic and trimetal­lic cat­a­lysts for low-tem­per­a­ture steam reform­ing of liq­uid fuels and non-pyrophor­ic cat­a­lysts for oxy­gen-assist­ed water gas shift. He recent­ly pro­posed a new design con­cept of sul­fur-tol­er­ant noble met­al cat­a­lysts for low-tem­per­a­ture hydrotreat­ing and dearom­a­ti­za­tion for ultra clean fuels.

Song is an active leader in hydro­car­bon pro­cess­ing research and has been elect­ed as Chair of the Fuel Chem­istry and the Petro­le­um Chem­istry Divi­sions of Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety as well as Chair of the Advi­so­ry Board for the Inter­na­tion­al Pitts­burgh Coal Con­fer­ence. He has also served as chair or co-chair for over 35 inter­na­tion­al sym­posia, and is cur­rent­ly on eight research jour­nal advi­so­ry boards, includ­ing Ener­gy & Fuels, Catal­y­sis Today, Applied Catal­y­sis B: Envi­ron­men­tal, RSC Catal­y­sis series, Research on Chem­i­cal Inter­me­di­ates, Jour­nal of Fuel Chem­istry and Tech­nol­o­gy, Acta Petrolei Sini­ca, and Coal Con­ver­sion. In addi­tion, he serves on the sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry boards for sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence series and for sev­er­al R&D orga­ni­za­tions world­wide.

A pro­lif­ic author of many high-impact pub­li­ca­tions, Song has deliv­ered 40 ple­nary or keynote lec­tures at inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and 190 invit­ed lec­tures world­wide. He has 170 ref­er­eed jour­nal arti­cles (which received over 4400 cita­tions), 6 ref­er­eed books, 25 book chap­ters, 11 spe­cial jour­nal issues, 20 patents and patent appli­ca­tions, and over 280 con­fer­ence papers. He has also received a num­ber of major awards, includ­ing the 2010 Class of ACS Fel­lows, the Ful­bright Dis­tin­guished Schol­ar from US-UK; the Her­man Pines Award for Out­stand­ing Research in Catal­y­sis from Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go in North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; the Chang Jiang Schol­ar from the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion of Chi­na; Most Cit­ed Authors in Catal­y­sis from Else­vi­er; Out­stand­ing Schol­ar Over­seas from the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sci­ences; the Dis­tin­guished Catal­y­sis Researcher Lec­ture­ship from Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry; the Robin­son Dis­tin­guished Lec­ture­ship from Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta, Cana­da; the NEDO Fel­low­ship and AIST Fel­low­ship Awards from Japan; Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Awards from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Society’s Petro­le­um Chem­istry Divi­sion, and from the Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Pitts­burgh Coal Con­fer­ence. With­in the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, he has received the Wil­son Award for Excel­lence in Research, the Fac­ul­ty Men­tor­ing Award, Inven­tor Incen­tive Awards and the Mate­ri­als Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing Ser­vice Award. . In addi­tion, Song has held vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor­ships with Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don, Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris VI, Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty, Dalian Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Taiyuan Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Tian­jin Uni­ver­si­ty, and Dalian Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Physics as well as Insti­tute of Coal Chem­istry with­in Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

A Storch Award Sym­po­sium in Hon­or of Chun­shan Song was held at ACS Fall 2010 Nation­al Meet­ing in Boston dur­ing August 22–26, 2010.