Catalysis and the 2006 Nobel Prize in chemistry

Updat­ed: 12:08 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2005
 
STOCKHOLM, Swe­den — Amer­i­cans Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock and Yves Chau­vin of France won the Nobel Prize in chem­istry Wednes­day for dis­cov­er­ies that let indus­try cre­ate drugs and advanced plas­tics in a more effi­cient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly way.

The trio won the award for their devel­op­ment of the metathe­sis method in organ­ic syn­the­sis — a way to swap groups of atoms between mol­e­cules that the Roy­al Swedish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences likened to a dance in which cou­ples change part­ners.

Israel Wachs receives Herman Pines Award

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is pleased to announce that the 2005 Her­man Pines Award in Catal­y­sis is pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Israel E. Wachs from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty.

The Her­man Pines Award is pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go at its Spring Sym­po­sium for out­stand­ing research in the field of catal­y­sis. Her­man Pines was an out­stand­ing research sci­en­tist, and his work rev­o­lu­tion­ized the gen­er­al under­stand­ing of organ­ic chem­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons inter­act­ing with strong acids. The award in his hon­or is spon­sored by UOP where Her­man began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents over a 23-year peri­od. The award is being co-spon­sored by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Pro­fes­sor Pines was a found­ing mem­ber.

For­mal pre­sen­ta­tion of the award will take place at the 2005 Spring Sym­po­sium of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go on Wednes­day, May 18, 2005, where Pro­fes­sor Wachs will present the keynote address.

Fabio Ribeiro awarded NY Catalysis Society Excellence in Catalysis Award

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Fabio Ribeiro of Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty is the 2005 recip­i­ent of the Soci­ety’s Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny. Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro is being rec­og­nized for his cre­ativ­i­ty and out­stand­ing accom­plish­ments in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. His work is broad­ly rec­og­nized and char­ac­ter­ized by com­plete atten­tion to detail, and care­ful exper­i­men­tal design to pre­cise­ly answer impor­tant ques­tions in catal­y­sis. This award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro for his use of the com­bi­na­tion of struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, chem­i­cal kinet­ics, and ab ini­tio cal­cu­la­tions to under­stand cat­alyt­ic sys­tems at a fun­da­men­tal lev­el. Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro’s career is marked by suc­cess and achieve­ment at every stage includ­ing grad­u­ate and post grad­u­ate stud­ies with Michel Boudart and Gabor Somor­jai, indus­tri­al research at Cat­alyt­i­ca Incor­po­rat­ed, and fac­ul­ty appoint­ments at Worces­ter Poly­tech­nic and Pur­due­U­ni­ver­si­ty. In a rel­a­tive­ly short peri­od of time, Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro has pro­vid­ed key insights into numer­ous impor­tant and diverse cat­alyt­ic sys­tems, such as cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion, hydrodechlo­ri­na­tion, hydro­car­bon rearrange­ment on alloy sur­faces, and prop­er­ties of oxy­gen-mod­i­fied tran­si­tion met­al car­bides.

Enrique Iglesia awarded the 2005 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley has been award­ed the 2005 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. The award is spon­sored by John­son Matthey Cat­a­lysts and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award 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.

Enrique Iglesia’s work has cre­at­ed fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries con­nect­ing the chem­istry of mate­ri­als, kinet­ics, in situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and reac­tion-trans­port mod­els to under­stand indus­tri­al catal­y­sis and to design new cat­a­lysts. Exam­ples include oxide nanos­truc­tures as acid and oxi­da­tion cat­a­lysts and exchanged cations and met­al clus­ters for alka­ne con­ver­sion. Before mov­ing to his cur­rent posi­tion at Berke­ley, he spent about ten years at Exxon Research and Engi­neer­ing, where he made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in the area of Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis and alka­ne acti­va­tion. His con­tin­u­ous inter­est in indus­tri­al prob­lems is reflect­ed in his fil­ing of eight patents since join­ing Berke­ley. The main thrust of his work, how­ev­er, has been all along the under­stand­ing of struc­ture and func­tion in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na. The scope of his work uses many tools to assem­ble and coa­lesce this knowl­edge. It starts with the syn­the­sis of active oxide domains or met­al clus­ters with­in porous mate­ri­als and is fol­lowed by detailed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of atom­ic arrange­ments. The num­ber of these sites is count­ed, and in situ spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques such as IR, Raman, UV-vis­i­ble and X‑ray absorp­tion are used to iden­ti­fy their local geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties. Final­ly, steady-state and tran­sient kinet­ic stud­ies, includ­ing exten­sive use of iso­topes, are com­bined with in situ spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques to iden­ti­fy adsorbed inter­me­di­ates and ulti­mate­ly the iden­ti­ty and kinet­ic rel­e­vance of ele­men­tary steps. The qual­i­ty, quan­ti­ty, and impact of his fun­da­men­tal pub­li­ca­tions are very impres­sive. Enrique is a pop­u­lar lec­tur­er; he has been very active in the orga­ni­za­tion and oper­a­tion of many catal­y­sis meet­ings. He also serves our com­mu­ni­ty as the Edi­tor-in-Chief of Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis.

The lec­ture­ship pro­vides an hon­o­rar­i­um and a trav­el stipend that will allow him to vis­it many of the local clubs of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Local clubs should con­tact Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia direct­ly [iglesia@cchem.berkeley.edu] about speak­ing arrange­ments over the next two years. More infor­ma­tion about this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees are avail­able with­in the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page (www.nacatsoc.org).

2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award to Henrik Topsøe

The 2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis to Dr. Hen­rik Top­søe of the Hal­dor Top­søe Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Lyn­g­by, Den­mark. The award is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc., and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. 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.

Hen­rik’s work and lead­er­ship have made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of hydrotreat­ing cat­a­lysts. Hen­rik has been an essen­tial con­trib­u­tor to many com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions on hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion and oth­er cat­a­lysts and one of the prin­ci­pal forces behind the posi­tion that Hal­dor Top­søe A/S holds in com­mer­cial deploy­ments in cat­a­lysts and process­es. “Hen­rik Topsøe’s work pro­vid­ed the con­cepts and defin­i­tive evi­dence for the CoMoS descrip­tion of the syn­er­gy between MoS2 struc­tures and Co and Ni pro­mot­ers.” “His pas­sion­ate efforts to bring state-of-the-art tools and con­cepts into the solu­tion of com­plex indus­tri­al prob­lems are with­out equal in the inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty today.” With all this Hen­rik has been a pro­lif­ic indus­tri­al con­trib­u­tor to the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture. Also, “he has been a key intel­lec­tu­al and phys­i­cal moti­va­tion­al force behind the emer­gence of the aca­d­e­m­ic Dan­ish catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty.”

Hen­rik will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the Spring 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Philadel­phia. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org

Professor Matthew Neurock selected as 2005 Emmett Awardee

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Matthew Neu­rock has been select­ed
for the 2005 Paul H. Emmett Awardee in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize. The pur­pose of the Award is 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 Neurock’s inter­ests include com­pu­ta­tion­al het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, mol­e­c­u­lar mod­el­ing, and kinet­ics of com­plex reac­tion sys­tems. “Matt is rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the­o­ret­i­cal meth­ods for the analy­sis and pre­dic­tion of cat­alyt­ic rates and selec­tiv­i­ties. Matt has devel­oped and applied the­o­ry and atom­ic-scale sim­u­la­tion in con­cert­ed and well-con­struct­ed efforts aimed at the elu­ci­da­tion of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms on met­al and oxide sur­faces and at under­stand­ing and design­ing active sites as they exist in real­is­tic and com­plex reac­tion envi­ron­ments. He and his group have brought ab ini­tio quan­tum mechan­i­cal meth­ods togeth­er with kinet­ic Monte Car­lo meth­ods to sim­u­late cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance and the effects of the explic­it reac­tion envi­ron­ment. His stud­ies have brought fun­da­men­tal insights into the roles of sur­face struc­ture, crys­tal­lite size, sur­face cov­er­age, alloy­ing, con­densed media, and tran­sient inter­me­di­ates.” Other’s remark that “Matt has been extreme­ly suc­cess­ful at apply­ing quan­tum chem­i­cal meth­ods to a broad range of prob­lems in sur­face chem­istry.”

Matt will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the Spring 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Philadel­phia. The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace and Com­pa­ny. It is admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org

Awards to E. Iglesia, M. Davis, W. Goodman, and I. Wachs

Enrique Igle­sia has received the 2005 George A. Olah Award in Hydro­car­bon Chem­istry from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. It will be pre­sent­ed at the 2005 ACS Meet­ing in San Diego in March 2005. The award is giv­en to rec­og­nize, encour­age, and stim­u­late out­stand­ing research achieve­ments in hydro­car­bon or petro­le­um chem­istry. The recip­i­ent must have accom­plished out­stand­ing research in the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons or of petro­le­um and its prod­ucts. Spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to the inde­pen­dence of thought and the orig­i­nal­i­ty shown. Enrique Igle­sia has brought togeth­er mech­a­nis­tic insights into sur­face reac­tions with detailed atom­ic-scale char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of inor­gan­ic solids to design advanced mate­ri­als for cat­alyt­ic hydro­car­bon con­ver­sions.

Mark Davis of Cal­tech has receieved the E. V. Mur­phree Award in Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny and Exxon­Mo­bil Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny. This award is giv­en to stim­u­late fun­da­men­tal research in indus­tri­al and engi­neer­ing chem­istry, the devel­op­ment of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples and their appli­ca­tion to indus­tri­al process­es.

D. Wayne Good­man, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty will receive the 2005 Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund. The award is to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing the­o­ret­i­cal, exper­i­men­tal, or devel­op­men­tal research result­ing in the advance­ment of under­stand­ing or appli­ca­tion of catal­y­sis.

Israel Wachs of Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty was one of two sci­en­tists select­ed by the ACS Divi­sion of Col­loid & Sur­face Chem­istry as win­ners of its 2004 Lang­muir Lec­ture Awards. Israel has worked on the sur­face sci­ence of sup­port­ed met­al oxide cat­a­lysts, where an active 2‑D sur­face met­al oxide is dis­persed on an oxide sup­port sub­strate. He spoke on sol­id-vac­u­um or sol­id-gas inter­faces at the recent Philadel­phia ACS meet­ing in August 2004.

ORCS announces 3 awards in catalysis

At their 20th ORCS meet­ing in Hilton Head, South Car­oli­na, the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety pre­sent­ed the fol­low­ing awards:

2003 Paul N. Rylan­der Award was pre­sent­ed to Don­na G. Black­mond of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege, Lon­don, in part for her kinet­ic analy­sis and mod­el­ing of cat­alyt­ic and asym­met­ric cat­alyt­ic reac­tions.

2004 Paul N. Rylan­der Award was pre­sent­ed to Richard C. Larock of Iowa State Uni­veristy, Ames, Iowa, as a pio­neer in the use of pal­la­di­um in organ­ic syn­the­sis, includ­ing the dis­cov­ery of a range of new method­olo­gies involv­ing aryl, allylic, and vinylic pal­la­di­um inter­me­di­ates used to syn­the­size a broad range of organ­ic com­pounds.

2004 Mur­ray Raney Award to Jean Lessard of the Uni­ver­siy of Sher­brooke, Que­bec, Cana­da for his pio­neer­ing efforts in elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic elec­trodes, espe­cial­ly for a more durable and struc­tural­ly sta­ble Raney-type elec­trode.

Professor Douglas Stephan- 2004 Ciapetta Lecturer

The 2004 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship is award­ed to Pro­fes­sor Dou­glas Stephan of the Depart­ment of Chem­istry & Bio­chem­istry, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wind­sor, Wind­sor, Ontario, Cana­da. The F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is cospon­sored by Davi­son Cat­a­lyst, a busi­ness unit of W. R. Grace & Co and The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on indus­tri­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic process­es and the dis­cov­ery of new cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and sys­tems of poten­tial indus­tri­al impor­tance. The Award con­sists of a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um and addi­tion­al mon­ey is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ing expens­es to vis­it the local clubs. Local clubs should con­tact Pro­fes­sor Stephan direct­ly to make trav­el arrange­ments.

Pro­fes­sor Stephan received his Ph.D. in Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario. He under­took a NATO Post­doc­tor­al Fel­low in Chem­istry at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty before mov­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wind­sor where he has spent his career doing research. Doug Stephan’s research group has been active for over 20 years in study­ing the fun­da­men­tal organometal­lic chem­istry of ear­ly tran­si­tion met­als. He has received many dis­tinc­tions and hon­ors for his accu­mu­lat­ed accom­plish­ments dur­ing the course of his stud­ies, but it was his recent suc­cess in devel­op­ing a nov­el set of cat­a­lysts for poly­mer­iz­ing eth­yl­ene that have earned Doug Stephan many acco­lades both in indus­tri­al cir­cles and among his aca­d­e­m­ic peers. This devel­op­ment is expect­ed to have a major impact on the Cana­di­an petro­chem­i­cals indus­try, which is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ty in this coun­try. Stephan’s inno­v­a­tive approach to ancil­lary lig­and design quick­ly led to dra­mat­ic find­ings of new patentable cat­a­lysts that were high­ly active under indus­tri­al con­di­tions. NOVA Chem­i­cals’ goal of devel­op­ing new sin­gle site cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies was sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced with the dis­cov­er­ies of poten­tial new cat­a­lyst com­pounds from the Stephan labs. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with a team of chemists and engi­neers at NOVA Chem­i­cals Stephan’s team worked to explore and devel­op these new cat­a­lyst fam­i­lies towards com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Stephan and his group have con­tin­ued to study the struc­ture-reac­tiv­i­ty rela­tion­ship of these sin­gle-site cat­a­lysts. In addi­tion, Stephan’s group has dis­cov­ered and stud­ied a num­ber of unusu­al deac­ti­va­tion path­ways that these new cat­a­lysts exhib­it allow­ing opti­miza­tion of process con­di­tions. More recent­ly, Stephan’s group has been study­ing mod­i­fied sys­tems that exhib­it liv­ing cat­a­lyst behav­ior and their use in the for­ma­tion of co- and block poly­mers. His new efforts are focused on devel­op­ing new co-cat­a­lysts as well as strate­gies to late tran­si­tion met­al cat­a­lysts.

Israel Wachs wins AIChE Award

Pro­fes­sor Israel E. Wachs of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment of Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty is this year’s recip­i­ent of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers’ (AIChE) Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Prac­tice Award, which will be pre­sent­ed at the Annu­al AIChE meet­ing in San Fran­cis­co the week of Novem­ber 16–21, 2003. The AIChE C&® Prac­tice Award rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als who have made pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al prac­tice of catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing and is spon­sored by Mer­ck & Com­pa­ny, Inc.

Pro­fes­sor Wachs is being rec­og­nized for his com­mer­cial devel­op­ments of nov­el cat­a­lysts and reac­tion engi­neer­ing appli­ca­tions in the areas of:

  1. o‑xylene oxi­da­tion to phthal­ic anhy­dride over sup­port­ed promoted‑V2O5/TiO2 cat­a­lysts.
  2. Methanol oxi­da­tion to formalde­hyde over bulk met­al oxide cat­a­lysts.
  3. A new envi­ron­men­tal cat­alyt­ic process that con­verts unde­sir­able waste gas­es from pulp mills to valu­able chem­i­cals (H2CO, H2SO4, ter­penes) and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly elim­i­nates sig­nif­i­cant pol­lut­ing emis­sions of VOCs, NOx, SOx and CO2.