Mobil research team, Clarence Chang, Dr. Antho­ny Sil­vestri and William Lang, were charged with doing explorato­ry research to open new fron­tiers in fuel and petro­chem­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy. In 1972, while con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of the reac­tion path­ways of polar organ­ic com­pounds on acidic zeo­lites, the key exper­i­ment was con­ceived that led to the dis­cov­ery of the con­ver­sion of methanol to hydro­car­bons, includ­ing gaso­line-range, high-octane aro­mat­ics, over the syn­thet­ic zeo­lite ZSM‑5.

This dis­cov­ery became the basis of the Mobil Methanol-to-Gaso­line (MTG) Process, the first syn­fu­el process to be com­mer­cial­ized in 50 years, and sparked world­wide inter­est and research that con­tin­ues to this day. In 1985, it was com­mer­cial­ized in New Zealand as the Gas-to-Gaso­line Process, in response to the Arab Oil Embar­go and the ensu­ing ener­gy cri­sis. The process oper­at­ed suc­cess­ful­ly for a decade before being sus­pend­ed due to the end of the ener­gy cri­sis and declin­ing crude oil prices. How­ev­er, because methanol can be made from any gasi­fi­able car­bona­ceous mate­r­i­al, such as coal and bio­mass, the MTG process may again play a vital role in a future of dwin­dling oil and gas resources.

This patent and asso­ci­at­ed patents revealed a new way to man­u­fac­ture gaso­line, bring­ing greater secu­ri­ty and self-suf­fi­cien­cy to gaso­line-reliant con­sumers, nations and the world at large. A grad­u­ate of Har­vard, Clarence D. Chang is the author of over 60 papers and ency­clo­pe­dia chap­ters, as well as a book, Hydro­car­bons from Methanol. For his dis­cov­ery, he was award­ed the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety 1992 E.V. Mur­phree Award and the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety 1999 Eugene J. Houdry Award among oth­er hon­ors. He holds over 220 U.S. patents.

Dr. Sil­vestri authored or co-authored about 60 papers. In recog­ni­tion of his pro­fes­sion­al accom­plish­ments, Dr. Sil­vestri received the New York Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis in 1984 and was named a Penn State Alum­ni Fel­low in 1995. He holds 28 U.S. patents.
 
Con­tributed by Clarence D. Chang, Antho­ny J. Sil­vestri and William H. Lang
Mobil Cen­tral Research

ISELIN, NJ, Novem­ber 11, 2004— Local Engel­hard sci­en­tists who invent­ed a nov­el tech­nol­o­gy that enables automak­ers to cost effec­tive­ly com­ply with increas­ing­ly strin­gent engine-emis­sion stan­dards, are recip­i­ents of a 2004 Thomas Alva Edi­son Patent Award.

The Research & Devel­op­ment Coun­cil of New Jer­sey pre­sent­ed Harold Rabi­nowitz, Ron Heck and Zhicheng Hu with the award which rec­og­nizes ded­i­ca­tion to research and devel­op­ment that leads to tru­ly inno­v­a­tive break­throughs.

Rabi­nowitz, Heck and Hu were hon­ored at the R&D Coun­cil’s annu­al awards din­ner on Novem­ber 11, 2004 at New Jer­sey’s Lib­er­ty Sci­ence Cen­ter.

“This inven­tion is one of the crit­i­cal enablers for a sub­stan­tial increase in the effi­cien­cy of cat­alyt­ic emis­sion con­trol with­out a sig­nif­i­cant increase in cost,” said Mikhail Rod­kin, direc­tor of research and devel­op­ment, Envi­ron­men­tal Tech­nolo­gies. “It’s also a good exam­ple of the inge­nu­ity of Engel­hard sci­en­tists in the face of a for­mi­da­ble tech­ni­cal chal­lenge and mar­ket pres­sures.”

In the ear­ly 1990s, auto-emis­sion sys­tems typ­i­cal­ly con­tained two cat­a­lysts locat­ed under the vehi­cle floor away from the engine. Plac­ing the cat­a­lysts there pro­tect­ed them from the extreme heat of engine exhaust gas­es, but led to a long warm-up time and high “cold-start” emis­sions (those dur­ing the first two min­utes fol­low­ing igni­tion). To com­pen­sate for low cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty at low tem­per­a­tures, the cat­a­lysts had to con­tain sig­nif­i­cant amounts of pre­cious met­als, typ­i­cal­ly plat­inum and rhodi­um. The three Engel­hard sci­en­tists invent­ed a close-cou­pled cat­a­lyst sys­tem that changed this par­a­digm.

The essence of the dis­cov­ery made by Rabi­nowitz, Heck and Hu was to employ a pal­la­di­um cat­a­lyst with sub­stan­tial­ly no addi­tion­al oxy­gen stor­age com­po­nent in the first close-cou­pled posi­tion, fol­lowed by down­stream cat­a­lyst that includes an oxy­gen stor­age com­po­nent. This enabled the use of the more ther­mal­ly sta­ble and low­er-cost pal­la­di­um in the close-cou­pled cat­a­lyst with­out adverse­ly affect­ing cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty.

To date, close-cou­pled cat­a­lysts have been installed on an esti­mat­ed 10 mil­lion vehi­cles world­wide. Their use has enabled many SUVs to have emis­sions com­pa­ra­ble to those from auto­mo­biles.