I am pleased to announce that Dr. Cong-Yan Chen of Chevron is the recip­i­ent of the 2020 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. Dr. Chen is also an adjunct pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis. The award is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and spon­sored by the W. R. Grace & Co. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to lec­ture at some of the local catal­y­sis clubs dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

Dr. Cong-Yan Chen’s research for over 25 years at Chevron cov­ers var­i­ous areas in the field of fun­da­men­tal and indus­tri­al catal­y­sis includ­ing syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of micro­p­orous and meso­porous mol­e­c­u­lar sieves, struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships of zeo­lites, adsorp­tion, dif­fu­sion and reac­tion mech­a­nisms. The work has had an empha­sis on inven­tion and devel­op­ment of cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tions of zeo­lites and oth­er cat­a­lysts in refin­ing and petro­chem­istry. He and his group devel­oped sev­er­al cat­alyt­ic process­es of indus­tri­al impor­tance. In one exam­ple, alka­ne dis­pro­por­tion­a­tion is applied in upgrad­ing or elim­i­nat­ing liq­uid petro­le­um gas (LPG, con­sist­ing of propane and butanes) at remote loca­tions, with the tar­get of inte­grat­ing the result­ing ethane into nat­ur­al gas and blend­ing the result­ing C5+ liq­uid into crude oil while sav­ing the trans­porta­tion and stor­age facil­i­ties for LPG. It pro­vides an eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal­ly benign process more attrac­tive than com­plex com­bi­na­tions of oth­er exist­ing tech­nolo­gies. Dr. Chen’s work has been pio­neer­ing in the devel­op­ment of borosil­i­cate zeo­lites in the area of aro­mat­ics cre­ation and trans­for­ma­tions in the petro­chem­i­cals sec­tor. In anoth­er exam­ple, a nov­el renew­able base oil tech­nol­o­gy is trans­lat­ed into com­mer­cial val­ue via zeo­lite catal­y­sis, rais­ing the lubri­cants’ per­for­mance to the next lev­el with envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits and resource sustainability.
 
Congratulations!
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Sponsored by UOP and the Catalysis Club of Chicago

 

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 in both indus­try and acad­e­mia, 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 co-spon­sored by UOP, where Her­man Pines began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents, and by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Her­man Pines was a found­ing mem­ber while at North­west­ern University.

The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2020 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium in May 2020 and con­sists of a plaque, a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Symposium.

The nom­i­nee must meet the fol­low­ing criteria:

• Sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments in catal­y­sis research over the past five years
• For year 2020, the award will be giv­en to a mem­ber of industry
• Active mem­ber in catal­y­sis community
• A res­i­dent of North America.

Dead­line for nom­i­na­tion is Jan­u­ary 17, 2020.

Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized. A com­plete cur­ricu­lum vitae with letter(s) of sup­port for the nom­i­nee must be includ­ed in the nom­i­na­tion, togeth­er with the descrip­tion of work. Let­ters of nom­i­na­tion and sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion must be sent as a sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment to:
 
Neil M. Schweitzer, Ph.D.
North­west­ern University
neil.schweitzer@northwestern.edu
 
List of past award recip­i­ents of the Her­man Pines Award
1999 Prof. Harold Kung – North­west­ern University
2000 Dr. John Mon­nier – East­man Chem­i­cal Company
2001 Prof. Lan­ny Schmidt – Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota
2002 Dr. James Brazdil – BP
2003 Prof. James Dumesic – Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin
2004 Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya – BP
2005 Prof. Israel Wachs – Lehigh University
2006 Dr. Jeff Miller – BP
2007 Prof. Chun­shan Song – Penn­syl­va­nia State University
2008 Dr. Alek­sey Yez­erets – Cum­mins Inc.
2009 Prof. Tobin Marks – North­west­ern University
2010 Dr. James Rekoske – UOP
2011 Prof. Jing­guang Chen – Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
2012 Dr. Stu­art Soled — ExxonMobil
2013 Prof. W. Nicholas Del­gass – Pur­due University
2014 Dr. Haiy­ing Chen – John­son Matthey
2015 Prof. Fabio Ribeiro – Pur­due University
2016 Dr. DY Jan – Hon­ey­well UOP
2017 Prof. Peter Stair – North­west­ern University
2018 Dr. Jerzy Klosin — Dow
2019 Prof. Manos Mavrikakis — Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Abhaya Datye of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by John­son Matthey and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000, which will be pre­sent­ed at the award ban­quet at the NAM26 Chica­go meet­ing. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

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. The awardee is select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be 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. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate periodical. 

Pro­fes­sor Abhaya Datye and his research group have per­formed ele­gant and cre­ative exper­i­ments that have clar­i­fied rela­tion­ships between the atom­ic-lev­el struc­ture of het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts and their reac­tiv­i­ty and/or sta­bil­i­ty. He has intro­duced new approach­es to doing catal­y­sis research (e.g., mod­el cat­a­lysts and sam­ple prepa­ra­tion tech­niques) that enabled the use of elec­tron microscopy to study indus­tri­al­ly rel­e­vant cat­a­lysts. He thus elu­ci­dat­ed impor­tant fun­da­men­tal con­cepts that are cru­cial for design­ing cat­a­lysts for improved per­for­mance. He showed how cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty is enhanced due to oxi­da­tion-induced rough­en­ing of met­al sur­faces in nanopar­ti­cles, and how phase trans­for­ma­tions in Fe Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch cat­a­lysts can cause cat­a­lyst attri­tion. A major con­tri­bu­tion was the use of elec­tron microscopy and sin­ter­ing rate equa­tions to uncov­er atom­ic-scale mech­a­nisms of cat­a­lyst sin­ter­ing. Recent­ly, his group described a method for gen­er­at­ing sta­ble monomer­ic Pt species on the sur­faces of a ceria sup­port, termed atom trap­ping. In this work, high tem­per­a­tures, which nor­mal­ly destroy cat­a­lysts, enable the syn­the­sis of ther­mal­ly sta­ble sin­gle atom cat­a­lysts (SACs). By study­ing the trap­ping of mobile atoms on the sup­port, his group has improved our fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of cat­a­lyst regen­er­a­tion. These insights have led to many cre­ative ideas for new sin­ter-resis­tant cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als that have great indus­tri­al relevance.