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.