Steve Ittel receives 2002 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award

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 named University Professor and receives National Metal of Science

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.”

2002 Catalysis Award of the Canadian Institute for Chemistry to Professor Michael Baird

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.

Call for papers: High throughput screening

High-Throughput Experimentation in Heterogeneous Catalysis: Synthesis, Surface Characterization and Performance Evaluation

 
2002 Fall ACS Meet­ing, August 18–22, 2002 Boston, MA

Call For Papers
 
Com­bi­na­to­r­i­al tech­niques, which rev­o­lu­tion­ized the search for new drug mol­e­cules in the 1990s, have recent­ly showed promise for the rapid devel­op­ment of func­tion­al inor­gan­ic mate­ri­als, such as het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts. This ses­sion will high­light recent devel­op­ments in com­bi­na­to­r­i­al het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. Both fun­da­men­tal and applied stud­ies will be includ­ed. Top­ics to be cov­ered in the ses­sion include emerg­ing method­olo­gies for high-through­put auto­mat­ed cat­a­lyst syn­the­sis and struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, cat­a­lyst eval­u­a­tion by kinet­ic screen­ing employ­ing mass-selec­tive and spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques, data-han­dling and opti­miza­tion rou­tines which direct the search towards the glob­al max­i­mum of cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance.

Sub­mit abstracts via Online Abstract Sub­mit­tal Sys­tem at www.acs.org/meetings.
Abstracts due date is April 15, 2002.

Please con­tact one of the fol­low­ing orga­niz­ers for inquires and sub­mis­sions:
 
Anne M. Gaffney
Rohm and Haas Co.
P.O. Box 904
727 Nor­ris­town Road
Spring House, PA 19477–0904
Tel: 215–619-5260
Fax: 215–619-1625
AGaffney@RohmHaas.com
 
Vadim Guliants
Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati
Dept. of Chem. Eng.
678 ERC (ML 171)
Cincin­nati, Ohio 45221–0171
Tel: 513–556-0203
Fax: 513–556-3473
vguliant@alpha.che.uc.edu
 
Israel E. Wachs
Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty
Dept. Chem. Eng.
Beth­le­hem, PA 18015
Tel: 610–758-4274
Fax: 610–758-5057
iew0@Lehigh.EDU

John Monnier awarded F. G. Ciapetta Lectureship in Catalysis

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.

Israel Wachs receives 2001 Clean Air Excellence Award

Pro­fes­sor Israel Wachs of Lehigh University’s Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment has received a 2001 Clean Air Excel­lence Award. The EPA 2001 Clean Air Excel­lence Awards pro­gram hon­ors out­stand­ing, inno­v­a­tive efforts that help to make progress in achiev­ing clean­er air. The research, spon­sored by Geor­gia-Pacif­ic Corp., has pro­vid­ed the pulp indus­try with a poten­tial­ly prof­itable and inno­v­a­tive third alter­na­tive method of pro­cess­ing their waste gas­es. Using a new process and cat­a­lyst devel­oped at Lehigh, the methyl alco­hol and mer­cap­tans can be con­vert­ed to formalde­hyde, a build­ing-block chem­i­cal used for the adhe­sives, which find appli­ca­tion in the ply­wood indus­try. [See www.pollutionengineering.com or N. Moretti’s arti­cle in Pol­lu­tion Engi­neer­ing, Jan. 2002, pp 24–28]. The waste gas­es are sim­ply processed through a plant, which is sim­i­lar in design to a con­ven­tion­al formalde­hyde plant that uti­lizes com­mer­cial-grade methyl alco­hol as a feed mate­r­i­al. The nov­el envi­ron­men­tal­ly benign process was con­cep­tu­al­ly devel­oped and exper­i­men­tal­ly proven on a lab­o­ra­to­ry scale (see US Patent Nos. 5,907,066 and 6,198,005 B1 to I.E. Wachs/Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty). The pilot plant stud­ies were per­formed at Geor­gia-Paci­fic’s Brunswick, GA pulp mill on the real indus­tri­al waste streams.

The Clean Air Excel­lence Awards [http://www.epa.gov/oar/caaac/program.html] Pro­gram, spon­sored by the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agen­cy’s (EPA’s) Office of Air and Radi­a­tion, was estab­lished in 2000 at the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Clean Air Act Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (CAAAC). The CAAAC is a pol­i­cy-lev­el advi­so­ry group to the EPA. The Awards Pro­gram annu­al­ly rec­og­nizes and hon­ors out­stand­ing, inno­v­a­tive efforts that help to make progress in achiev­ing clean­er air.

The award cri­te­ria are: (1) the tech­nol­o­gy is com­mer­cial­ly viable and can be wide­ly applied, (2) the tech­nol­o­gy is cost-effec­tive rel­a­tive to oth­er air pol­lu­tion tech­nolo­gies that already exist and (3) the tech­nol­o­gy is devel­oped at the pro­to­type stage or beyond. In 2000, XononTM Cool Com­bus­tion Sys­tem — Cat­alyt­i­ca Com­bus­tion Sys­tems, Inc. received an award for devel­op­ing the XononTM Cool Com­bus­tion sys­tem to reduce nitro­gen oxides by 90 per­cent. XononTM pre­vents the for­ma­tion of nitro­gen oxides before they can form and has been applied in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia in an indus­tri­al gas tur­bine.

In Memoriam: George C.A. Schuit (1910 – 2001)

George Schuit passed away peace­ful­ly on Sun­day, Decem­ber 9, 2001, at the blessed age of 91. He was a great sci­en­tist, an extreme­ly friend­ly, gen­er­ous, and inspir­ing per­son. After obtain­ing his PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lei­den in 1938, George worked for 25 years at the Shell lab­o­ra­to­ries in Ams­ter­dam, where he devel­oped into one the pio­neers of Dutch catal­y­sis, and a leader of inter­na­tion­al stature. His research inter­ests ranged from homo­ge­neous to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, from the­o­ret­i­cal chem­istry to spec­troscopy, and from the mol­e­c­u­lar detail to the indus­tri­al appli­ca­tion.

In 1961 he was appoint­ed at the Eind­hoven Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy to the chair of Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry and Catal­y­sis, as the first pro­fes­sor in catal­y­sis in the Nether­lands. He super­vised 22 PhD stu­dents and many more Mas­ters stu­dents. His major fields of research were selec­tive oxi­da­tion, hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion, and nitro­gen fix­a­tion. Begin­ning in the ear­ly 1970’s, George began to spend a sig­nif­i­cant frac­tion of his time at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware, and after his retire­ment from Eind­hoven in 1976, he strength­ened his com­mit­ment to Delaware, where he was influ­en­tial in the start-up of a fledg­ling catal­y­sis pro­gram that led to the estab­lish­ment of the uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in 1978. In Delaware, George col­lab­o­rat­ed exten­sive­ly in research with numer­ous fac­ul­ty and stu­dents, helped to start a short course, and worked with Jim Katzer and Bruce Gates to write the text­book “Chem­istry of Cat­alyt­ic Process­es.” An annu­al lec­ture­ship in George’s hon­or was estab­lished in 1985; for many years, George was the hon­ored guest at this lec­ture.

In the course of the eight­ies George and his wife returned to The Nether­lands where they set­tled in Nue­nen, just out­side Eind­hoven. In these years he came reg­u­lar­ly to sem­i­nars and sym­posia in the Uni­ver­si­ty, but hard­ly in the lab­o­ra­to­ry. Mod­est as he was, he did not want to be in anyone’s way. We would have loved to see him more often to ben­e­fit from his expe­ri­ence and per­spec­tives!

In 1989 Rut­ger van San­ten — after Roel Prins, the sec­ond suc­ces­sor in Catal­y­sis, who pro­ceed­ed George at Eind­hoven – found­ed an insti­tute of catal­y­sis, which served as the nucle­ation point for the Nether­lands Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis Research (NIOK). The Eind­hoven branch became the Schuit Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis, employ­ing approx­i­mate­ly 100 sci­en­tists and stu­dents and fea­tur­ing twice per year the Schuit Lec­ture in Catal­y­sis, with promi­nent speak­ers from all over the world. The major spe­cial­iza­tion of the Schuit Insti­tute is the mol­e­c­u­lar descrip­tion of catal­y­sis aid­ed by spec­troscopy and the­o­ry, which is the field in George Schuit was a pio­neer. This theme is also strong­ly in evi­dence in the work of the Delaware cen­ter. We are proud that George’s name is for­ev­er con­nect­ed with catal­y­sis research at Eind­hoven and Delaware.

We will remem­ber him as a pio­neer of our pro­fes­sion, a great sci­en­tist of inter­na­tion­al cal­iber, and a won­der­ful and warm per­son, and an intel­lec­tu­al leader in catal­y­sis.
 
Bruce Gates and Hans Nie­mantsver­dri­et

New York Club’s Award for Excellence in Catalysis

2002 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN CATALYSIS

Presented by The Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York

REQUEST FOR NOMINATIONS

 
The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is seek­ing nom­i­na­tions for its twen­ty-first annu­al “Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis.” The award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny, con­sists of a plaque and a $1,200 gift. It is grant­ed to an indi­vid­ual or a research team from North Amer­i­ca to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions in either applied or basic research in either homo­ge­neous or het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. Par­tic­u­lar effort is made to iden­ti­fy wor­thy indi­vid­u­als or teams who have not received suf­fi­cient recog­ni­tion for their work.

This award will bring due recog­ni­tion to the recipient(s), and we appre­ci­ate your help in seek­ing first-rate can­di­dates. We espe­cial­ly need to for­ti­fy our active nom­i­na­tion list! Nom­i­na­tions are solicit­ed from any­one who is cur­rent­ly, or has been pre­vi­ous­ly, active in the field of catal­y­sis. Nom­i­na­tions pre­vi­ous­ly sub­mit­ted as well as new ones will remain active for a peri­od of three years.

Those wish­ing to sub­mit a nom­i­na­tion should write a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion for the indi­vid­ual nom­i­nee or team, includ­ing per­ti­nent bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion and a spe­cif­ic descrip­tion of the impact of the nominee’s achieve­ments in catal­y­sis. The max­i­mum length of the let­ter should be no more than two pages. It may be accom­pa­nied by copies of no more than two items pre­sent­ing impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion, such as papers or patents.

Dead­line for receipt of nom­i­na­tions is Jan­u­ary 18, 2002.

Past Recipients of the Award

  • 1982 J.A. Rabo (Union Car­bide)
  • 1983 K. Kli­er (Lehigh)
  • 1984 W. Kaed­ing, et al (Mobil)
  • 1985 A. Van­nice (U. of Penn­syl­va­nia)
  • 1986 J. Lunsford (Texas A&M)
  • 1987 F.J. Karol, et al (Union Car­bide)
  • 1988 S.J. Tauster (Engel­hard)
  • 1989 Bruce C. Gates (Delaware)
  • 1990 W. Kei­th Hall (Pitts­burgh)
  • 1991 N.Y. Chen (Mobil)
  • 1992 H.S. Gan­di (Ford)
  • 1993 Gary L. Haller (Yale)
  • 1994 James A. Dumesic (Wis­con­sin)
  • 1995 Gary McVick­er (Exxon)
  • 1996 Israel Wachs (Lehigh)
  • 1997 John Newsam (Mol­e­c­u­lar Sim­u­la­tions Inc)
  • 1998 Ter­ry Bak­er (North­east­ern)
  • 1999 Shun Fung (Exxon)
  • 2000 Hen­ry C. Foley (Delaware)
  • 2001 J.F. Brazdil, et al (BP Chem­i­cal)

2002 Spring Symposium

 
Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York
Fri­day, April 26, 2002
Seton Hall Uni­ver­si­ty, South Orange, New Jer­sey
 
FIRST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan NY invites you to sub­mit abstracts of papers for oral or poster pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2002 Spring Sym­po­sium. As a head­ing of the abstract please list the title, author(s) (under­line the speak­er) and affil­i­a­tion. The length of the abstract should not exceed one page, sin­gle-spaced. Twen­ty min­utes will be allot­ted for each oral pre­sen­ta­tion, fol­lowed by a ten-minute dis­cus­sion peri­od. Times will be strict­ly mon­i­tored so as to encour­age a thor­ough dis­cus­sion. In addi­tion, two $125 awards will be giv­en to the best stu­dent posters. All mem­bers are urged to reserve the date and par­tic­i­pate in the Spring Sym­po­sium.

The dead­line for receipt of abstracts is Feb­ru­ary 1, 2002. You will be noti­fied of con­sid­er­a­tion for the Sym­po­sium by Feb­ru­ary 22, 2002.

Those sub­mit­ting an award nom­i­na­tion and/or paper(s)/poster(s) for con­sid­er­a­tion for the Spring Sym­po­sium should send or e‑mail them to:
 
David Cal­abro
Exxon­Mo­bil Research & Engi­neer­ing
1545 Route 22 East
Annan­dale, NJ 08801
david.c.calabro@exxonmobil.com

Newly available Pilot Plant Facilities and Services

World-Class Pilot Plant Facil­i­ties and Ser­vices Now Avail­able To Glob­al Refin­ing and Process Indus­tries.

Chevron­Tex­a­co Glob­al Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices Com­pa­ny (Globe Tech), an enti­ty of Chevron­Tex­a­co Cor­po­ra­tion and ITS Caleb Brett Corp., have entered into an agree­ment in Octo­ber 2001 to pro­vide clients in the refin­ing and process indus­tries use of Globe Tech’s pilot plant facil­i­ty locat­ed in Rich­mond, Cal­i­for­nia.

Chevron­Tex­a­co Corp., through Globe Tech, oper­ates the pilot plant to eval­u­ate cat­a­lysts in a vari­ety of refin­ery process­es. The adapt­able and flex­i­ble design of the pilot plant offers the abil­i­ty to test many oth­er reac­tion-based process­es. The facil­i­ty fea­tures large-scale dis­til­la­tion capa­bil­i­ties, feed­stock prepa­ra­tion and state-of-the-art infra­struc­ture.

Through the agree­ment, ITS Caleb Brett offers and Globe Tech pro­vides pilot plant capa­bil­i­ties for cat­alyt­ic, reac­tion, sep­a­ra­tion, purifi­ca­tion, batch scale, con­tin­u­ous process, flu­idized cat­alyt­ic crack­ing, fixed-bed cat­alyt­ic pro­cess­ing, small scale syn­the­sis, proof of con­cept, isother­mal, adi­a­bat­ic, liq­uid and gas recy­cling process­es and more.

For More Infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:
 
Erik Hol­la­day
ITS Caleb Brett
Glob­al Alliance Ser­vices
5051 Wes­t­heimer, Suite 1700
Hous­ton, Texas 77056
Tel: 713.407.3500 USA
Email: eholladay@itscb.com
 
Steven Scia­man­na
Chevron­Tex­a­co Glob­al Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices Co.
100 Chevron Way
Rich­mond, CA 94802
Tel. 510.242.5075 USA
Email: sfsc@chevrontexaco.com
 
Novem­ber 12, 2001
Rich­mond, Cal­i­for­nia USA Hous­ton, Texas USA Madrid, Spain

Nominations for Herman Pines Award

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is solic­it­ing nom­i­na­tions for the Her­man Pines Award 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. The award will be pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly at the Spring Sym­po­sium of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go. The recip­i­ent will receive a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

Past Herman Pines Award winners

  • 1999 Pro­fes­sor Harold Kung (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
  • 2000 Dr. John Mon­nier (East­man Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny)
  • 2001 Pro­fes­sor Lan­ny Schmidt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta)

A com­mit­tee appoint­ed by the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go will choose the recip­i­ent based on the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

  • Impor­tance of catal­y­sis research com­plet­ed in the past five years.
  • Alter­na­tion of the award between indus­tri­al and academic/national lab­o­ra­to­ry researchers.
  • Recip­i­ent must be a res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca.

For the award to be giv­en in 2002, nom­i­na­tions for AN INDUSTRIAL RESEARCHER are sought by Decem­ber 31, 2001. Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized. Please send your nom­i­na­tion either through Inter­net Nom­i­na­tion Form or direct­ly via reg­u­lar mail by the dead­line to:
 
Dr. Paul T. Barg­er
Pres­i­dent of the Chica­go Catal­y­sis Club
UOP Research Cen­ter
50 East Algo­nquin Road
Des Plaines, IL 60017–5016
ptbarger@uop.com (E‑mail)
(847) 391‑3729 (Phone)
(847) 391‑3724 (Fax)
 
The recip­i­ent will be noti­fied in Feb­ru­ary of 2002, and the award address will take place at the Spring Sym­po­sium in May of 2002.