Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley has received the 2003 R.H. Wil­helm Award in Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing from the AIChE. This award is spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research & Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny and rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­u­al’s sig­nif­i­cant and new con­tri­bu­tion in chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing. As a mem­ber of the AIChE, the recip­i­ent is expect­ed to have advanced the fron­tiers of chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing through orig­i­nal­i­ty, cre­ativ­i­ty, and nov­el­ty of con­cept or appli­ca­tion.

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is pleased to announce the Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award for 2003, to Dr. Stu­art L. Soled

This award rec­og­nizes Dr. Soled’s con­tri­bu­tions in the areas of mate­ri­als syn­the­sis and catal­y­sis research cul­mi­nat­ing in the devel­op­ment of the now com­mer­cial Neb­u­la fam­i­ly of cat­a­lysts for the envi­ron­men­tal­ly impor­tant pro­duc­tion of ultralow sul­fur diesel fuel. In addi­tion, Dr. Soled has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to Exxon’s AGC-21 process for the syn­the­sis of liq­uid fuels from nat­ur­al gas.

Pro­fes­sor Alex­is T. Bell has been award­ed the 2003 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Lec­ture­ship is spon­sored by John­son Matthey PLC’s Cat­a­lysts and Chem­i­cals Divi­sion and 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. His research activ­i­ties have led to more than 400 pub­li­ca­tions in the most pres­ti­gious jour­nals in catal­y­sis, chem­istry and chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing. Over many years he has applied cut­ting-edge spec­troscopy and the­o­ry to study sur­faces before and after cat­alyt­ic reac­tions.

His nom­i­na­tors offered some of the fol­low­ing remarks. His ear­li­er work with Pro­fes­sor Doros Theodor­ou pio­neered the appli­ca­tion of sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics for pre­dict­ing the adsorp­tion and dif­fu­sion of mol­e­cules in zeo­lites. This rep­re­sent­ed one of the first quan­ti­ta­tive appli­ca­tions of the­o­ret­i­cal meth­ods to sys­tems of direct cat­alyt­ic rel­e­vance. Lat­er his work with Pro­fes­sor Arup Chakraborty suc­ceed­ed in using quan­tum mechan­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions to deter­mine the sit­ing and sta­bil­i­ty of met­al cations exchanged into zeo­lites. In the area of Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis, his ele­gant use of in situ infrared meth­ods, sur­face sci­ence tech­niques, and iso­topic switch meth­ods led to a mech­a­nis­tic pic­ture of “unprece­dent­ed clar­i­ty and rel­e­vance.” Rate con­stants for ele­men­tary steps and the iden­ti­ty and reac­tiv­i­ty of spe­cif­ic adsorbed inter­me­di­ates were mea­sured and ulti­mate­ly used to elu­ci­date the under­ly­ing struc­ture-func­tion rela­tions for chain growth as well as the oper­a­tive basis for wide­ly report­ed strong meta-sup­port­ed inter­ac­tions. His stud­ies have led to demon­stra­tion of a nov­el bifunc­tion­al mech­a­nism for methanol syn­the­sis and leads to strong effects of Lewis acid­i­ty and basic­i­ty of ZrO2 on activ­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty. He has also made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in the area of zeo­lite catal­y­sis by elu­ci­dat­ing the mech­a­nism of both the syn­the­sis and func­tion of these het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts.

Togeth­er with Pro­fes­sor Clay Rad­ke, the appli­ca­tion of NMR meth­ods led to the direct obser­va­tion of the struc­ture-direct­ing role of organ­ic and inor­gan­ic cations dur­ing syn­the­sis and to a clear mech­a­nis­tic pic­ture of their self-assem­bly in com­plex solu­tions and gels. A com­bi­na­tion of kinet­ic, infrared, iso­topic and the­o­ret­i­cal stud­ies also led to a clear­er mech­a­nis­tic and struc­tur­al pic­ture of the nature of exchanged cations in zeo­lites and their involve­ment in form­ing and sta­bi­liz­ing reac­tive inter­me­di­ates in the reduc­tion of NO by hydro­car­bons. In the area of met­al oxides, Alex pio­neered the use of Raman spec­troscopy for the struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of dis­persed struc­tures. His appli­ca­tions of these meth­ods to the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts led to spe­cif­ic assign­ments of site reac­tiv­i­ty and to a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the mech­a­nism and site require­ments for desired and unde­sired reac­tions of alka­nes on dis­persed oxides. More recent­ly, work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia, he has also explored the use of in situ UV-vis­i­ble and X‑ray absorp­tion spec­troscopy in mea­sur­ing the num­ber of active sites and reduced cen­ters dur­ing alka­ne oxi­da­tion reac­tions. Through­out all this work, Alex has repeat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed a nat­ur­al tal­ent that allows him to trans­late his research on cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms, and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites for a wide range of chemistries into under­stand­able terms for his audi­ence.

The lec­ture­ship comes with an hon­o­rar­i­um and trav­el stipend that will allow him to vis­it many of the local clubs of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in order to stim­u­late both young and old minds to the mar­vels of catal­y­sis.
 
John N. Armor

The 2003 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis to Pro­fes­sor Aveli­no Cor­ma Canos of the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Valen­cia, Spain. The award is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc. The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of new and improved cat­a­lysts and process­es rep­re­sent­ing out­stand­ing advances in their use­ful appli­ca­tion.

Pro­fes­sor Cor­ma is wide­ly rec­og­nized as a pro­lif­ic and ver­sa­tile con­trib­u­tor to the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. In par­tic­u­lar, he has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dis­cov­ery of new cat­a­lysts for the iso­mer­iza­tion of light, straight-run naph­tha now in com­mer­cial use, oth­ers for bot­toms upgrad­ing in FCC units, a cat­a­lyst for a com­mer­cial process for the selec­tive epox­i­da­tion of propy­lene, the devel­op­ment of weak­ly basic sol­id cat­a­lysts for selec­tive iso­mer­iza­tion of alpha olefins, and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of cat­a­lysts for the iso­mer­iza­tion of beta pinene. His nom­i­na­tors com­ment­ed: a set of cat­a­lyst com­po­si­tions dis­closed in a patent for the iso­mer­iza­tion of light, straight-run naph­tha (US #5,057,471) is in cur­rent use in ten com­mer­cial units. These cat­a­lysts are based on H‑mordenite mate­ri­als with very low alu­minum con­tent and they show unprece­dent­ed sul­fur resis­tance. His group is also cred­it­ed with the dis­cov­ery and use of Al-con­tain­ing sepi­o­lite mate­ri­als as addi­tives for bot­toms upgrad­ing in FCC units. Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful scale-up activ­i­ties, these cat­a­lysts are in cur­rent use in at least one FCC refin­ery unit.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Cor­ma group and Sum­it­o­mo Cor­po­ra­tion has led to a com­mer­cial process for the selec­tive epox­i­da­tion of propy­lene to propy­lene oxide using cumene hydroper­ox­ide. The use of a zeolitic mate­r­i­al with large pores and a Si-O-Ti frame­work leads to unprece­dent­ed selec­tiv­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty. A com­mer­cial reac­tor using this tech­nol­o­gy is cur­rent­ly in start-up in Japan.

A joint project with Tagasako Cor­po­ra­tion and Acedesa led to the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts for the iso­mer­iza­tion of beta pinene to alpha pinene, as part of an over­all process for the syn­the­sis of a fam­i­ly of san­dal­wood-type fra­grances.
Pro­fes­sor Cor­ma’s group has also pio­neered the use of auto­mat­ed micro-activ­i­ty test units, whose design was patent­ed and licensed, and about 30 of these units have been placed in ser­vice.

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis to Pro­fes­sor Fran­cis­co Zaera of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at River­side, USA. The award is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace and Com­pa­ny. The Award is intend­ed to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions (under the age of 45) 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 Zaera’s main inter­ests lie with the study of mech­a­nisms of sur­face reac­tions by using mod­ern sur­face-sen­si­tive tech­niques. He is not­ed for bridg­ing the knowl­edge on sur­face reac­tions with that of organometal­lic sys­tems and for his exten­sion of kinet­ic the­o­ries to reac­tions on sur­faces. His nom­i­na­tors com­ment­ed that he has placed par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on mak­ing a con­nec­tion between the atom­ic details of sur­face reac­tions and het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic process­es. While most sur­face kinet­ic con­cepts have been rec­og­nized for some time, Fran­cis­co is cred­it­ed with quan­ti­fy­ing the kinet­ic con­se­quences of these effects by a vari­ety of sur­face sci­ence tech­niques to ratio­nal­ize the rates observed in mod­el sys­tems and cor­re­late them with prac­ti­cal het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis rates.

He has been giv­en cred­it for unequiv­o­cal­ly estab­lish­ing that most hydro­car­bon pro­cess­ing cat­a­lysts are cov­ered with a car­bona­ceous lay­er dur­ing the cat­alyt­ic process. By per­form­ing iso­tope label­ing exper­i­ments and using vibra­tional spec­troscopy and mol­e­c­u­lar beam stud­ies, Pro­fes­sor Zaera deter­mined that those deposits are not direct inter­me­di­ates in hydro­gena­tion-dehy­dro­gena­tion steps, but rather an play an indi­rect role by tem­per­ing the high activ­i­ty of the met­al sur­faces and pro­vid­ing a reser­voir for the sur­face hydro­gen. He is also cred­it­ed with estab­lish­ing the promi­nence of hydride and reduc­tive elim­i­na­tion steps as the main con­ver­sion path­ways for alkyl frag­ments on tran­si­tion met­als. He has also shown how spe­cif­ic small changes in rel­a­tive rates among com­pet­ing reac­tions can account for vast dif­fer­ences in selec­tiv­i­ty observed among some Group VIII met­al cen­ters.

The Catal­y­sis Divi­sion of the Chem­i­cal Insti­tute of Cana­da announced that Pro­fes­sor War­ren Piers, Depart­ment of Chem­istry, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary has been award­ed the 2002 Cana­di­an Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship Award. Pro­fes­sor Piers is not­ed for his work in syn­thet­ic organometal­lic chem­istry, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of new olefin poly­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lysts and co-cat­a­lysts, and the devel­op­ment of new cat­alyt­ic process­es using ear­ly tran­si­tion met­al organometal­lic com­pounds.

In addi­tion, Pro­fes­sor Harold Kung, Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (Evanstown, Ill) has been award­ed the 2002 Cross-Cana­da Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship Award. Pro­fes­sor Kung is rec­og­nized for his work in the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of light alka­nes, NOx reduc­tion in an oxi­diz­ing atmos­phere, sup­port­ed Au catal­y­sis and hydro­car­bon crack­ing over acidic zeo­lites.

Dr. Steven D. Ittel of DuPont was award­ed the 2002 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award dur­ing the orga­ni­za­tion’s annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium, held May 23, 2002 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. Dr. Ittel is high­ly regard­ed for his explorato­ry research and tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment in the field of organometal­lic-com­plex catal­y­sis.

Gabor Somor­jai, pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (USA) has been named Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor. He becomes only the 23rd indi­vid­ual in the entire Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia sys­tem to be hon­ored with this pres­ti­gious title. Pre­vi­ous hold­ers of this dis­tinc­tion include Glenn T. Seaborg and Melvin Calvin.

Gabor was also among a group of 15 recip­i­ents of the US Nation­al Met­al of Sci­ence. This is the high­est award for sci­ence and is pre­sent­ed by Pres­i­dent Bush. As Rita Col­well, direc­tor of the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, said in 1998 “These are super­stars in their respec­tive fields. They’ve con­tributed a life­time of stun­ning dis­cov­er­ies. We can only rec­og­nize them once with a sci­ence medal, but we applaud them dai­ly for their con­tin­u­al con­tri­bu­tions to humankind, to the reser­voir of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and for the impact they have on the stu­dents they men­tor and edu­cate along the way.”

CANADIAN CATALYSIS AWARD: The 2002 Catal­y­sis Award of the Cana­di­an Insti­tute for Chem­istry has been giv­en to Pro­fes­sor Michael Baird of Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty, Kingston Ontario. Spon­sored by the Cana­di­an Catal­y­sis Foun­da­tion, this prize is giv­en in even-num­bered years to a researcher who has con­tributed to the advance­ment of catal­y­sis in Cana­da. Michael Baird is an organometal­lic chemist who com­bines research in fun­da­men­tal organo tran­si­tion met­al chem­istry with appli­ca­tions to organ­ic syn­the­ses and catal­y­sis. Most recent­ly, Pro­fes­sor Baird has been explor­ing the uti­liza­tion of met­al­locene-like organometal­lic com­pounds as homo­ge­neous catalysts/initiators for olefin poly­mer­iza­tion, which show inter­est­ing sol­vent-specifc stere­o­chem­i­cal behav­ior, and a wide range of poly­mer­iza­tion path­ways for var­i­ous monomer sys­tems.

Dr. John Mon­nier [jmonnier@eastman.com] of East­man Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, Kingsport, TN has been award­ed the 2002 F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. This is one of 4 major awards for tech­ni­cal excel­lence the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety pro­vides every 2 years, and this award is cospon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace & Com­pa­ny and The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Dr. Mon­nier is being rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing work in catal­y­sis research and process devel­op­ment on the epox­i­da­tion of buta­di­ene and oth­er non-allylic olefins with sup­port­ed sil­ver cat­a­lysts. This research has led to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of over 100 new appli­ca­tions for epoxy­butene and its deriv­a­tives. In 1996, East­man Chem­i­cal brought on line a 3 mil­lion lbs/yr plant to sup­ply 5 new epoxy­butene deriv­a­tives to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and agri­cul­tur­al mar­kets.

The Soci­ety admin­is­ters this Lec­ture­ship. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even num­bered years, and the Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able from the Soci­ety to cov­er trav­el­ing expens­es. The hon­o­rar­i­um is pro­vid­ed com­plete­ly by Davi­son. Dr. Mon­nier is invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these Lec­tures.