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.