The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety con­grat­u­lates three of our mem­bers that have been rec­og­nized with sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety Nation­al Awards for 2012. The award recip­i­ents are Dr. Thomas F. Deg­nan Jr, Exxon­Mo­bil, Pro­fes­sor James A. Dumesic Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son, and Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. Dr. Deg­nan has been named as win­ner of the 2012 ACS Award in Indus­tri­al Chem­istry spon­sored by the ACS Divi­sion of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Man­age­ment and the ACS Divi­sion of Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry. Pro­fes­sor Dumesic has been named win­ner of the 2012 George A. Olah Award in Hydro­car­bon or Petro­le­um Chem­istry spon­sored by the George A. Olah Award Endow­ment. Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia has been named win­ner of the 2012 Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund. All three recip­i­ents will be hon­ored at an Awards Cer­e­mo­ny on March 27, 2012 held in con­junc­tion with the 243rd ACS Nation­al Meet­ing in San Diego, CA.
 
Bruce Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

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.