Chunshan Song Selected as Winner for 2010 Henry H Storch Award from ACS

Chun­shan Song, dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of fuel sci­ence in the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Min­er­al Engi­neer­ing and Direc­tor of EMS Ener­gy Insti­tute at Penn State, received the Hen­ry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chem­istry from Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) at the 240th ACS nation­al meet­ing held in Boston, MA, dur­ing Aug 21–26, 2010. He received this pres­ti­gious award in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to fuel sci­ence espe­cial­ly in the areas of clean fuels, catal­y­sis, and CO2 cap­ture and con­ver­sion research.

The Hen­ry H. Storch Award, co-spon­sored by the Divi­sion of Fuel Chem­istry of the ACS and Else­vi­er Ltd., is giv­en annu­al­ly to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual in the field of fuel sci­ence for an excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion to the research on the chem­istry and uti­liza­tion of hydro­car­bon fuels. Spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to inno­va­tion and nov­el­ty in the use of fuels, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of fuels, and advances in fuel chem­istry that ben­e­fit the pub­lic wel­fare or the envi­ron­ment. The award is the high­est hon­or for research award­ed by the ACS Fuel Chem­istry Division.

Song was recent­ly named a Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Fuel Sci­ence by Penn State’s Office of the Pres­i­dent. He is also pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Penn State Insti­tutes of Ener­gy and the Envi­ron­ment. He received a BS in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in 1982 from Dalian Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Chi­na, and a MS in 1986 and PhD in 1989 in applied chem­istry from Osa­ka Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan. He worked at the Research Cen­ter of Osa­ka Gas Com­pa­ny in Japan pri­or to join­ing Penn State in Nov 1989. 

Song is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for his orig­i­nal and inno­v­a­tive con­tri­bu­tions to clean fuels, catal­y­sis and CO2 cap­ture and con­ver­sion research. His ear­ly research at Penn State on cat­alyt­ic coal liq­ue­fac­tion and the effects of dry­ing coal on coal con­ver­sion at low tem­per­a­tures led to a new way of prepar­ing high­ly active dis­persed cat­a­lysts using water and sul­fide pre­cur­sor. Based on this dis­cov­ery, fur­ther fun­da­men­tal stud­ies using probe mol­e­cules result­ed in two patents for inven­tions on nano-sized ultra-high-sur­face met­al sul­fide cat­a­lysts that have been licensed to indus­try. From his efforts to make bet­ter use of coal-derived aro­mat­ics for val­ue-added chem­i­cals, he has designed shape-selec­tive alky­la­tion cat­a­lysts for syn­the­sis of pre­cur­sors for advanced poly­mers and engi­neer­ing mate­ri­als from naph­tha­lene, which have been patent­ed and licensed to indus­try. He has made major con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of coal-based advanced ther­mal­ly sta­ble jet fuels through his work on fun­da­men­tal chem­istry con­cern­ing the effects of intrin­sic fuel com­po­si­tion and struc­ture on ther­mal degra­da­tion of jet fuels, and his work on mod­el com­pounds stud­ies relat­ed to sta­ble bicyclic struc­tures and hydroaro­mat­ics and their tai­lored pro­duc­tion through catal­y­sis. These devel­op­ments were part of the large, 20 year, U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed jet fuel project led by Harold Schobert at Penn State, which has been scaled up to pilot plant pro­duc­tion. For ultra-clean fuels and fuel cells, Song and his group devised an inno­v­a­tive approach to selec­tive adsorp­tion for remov­ing sul­fur from liq­uid hydro­car­bon fuels over sol­id sur­face with­out using hydro­gen, which has also been licensed to indus­try and already used for mak­ing pro­to­type systems.

His group recent­ly devel­oped a nov­el approach to CO2 cap­ture by “mol­e­c­u­lar-bas­ket sor­bents” con­sist­ing of nanoporous matrix and func­tion­al poly­mers with supe­ri­or capac­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty. In addi­tion, his group devel­oped sul­fur-tol­er­ant and car­bon-resis­tant bimetal­lic and trimetal­lic cat­a­lysts for low-tem­per­a­ture steam reform­ing of liq­uid fuels and non-pyrophor­ic cat­a­lysts for oxy­gen-assist­ed water gas shift. He recent­ly pro­posed a new design con­cept of sul­fur-tol­er­ant noble met­al cat­a­lysts for low-tem­per­a­ture hydrotreat­ing and dearom­a­ti­za­tion for ultra clean fuels.

Song is an active leader in hydro­car­bon pro­cess­ing research and has been elect­ed as Chair of the Fuel Chem­istry and the Petro­le­um Chem­istry Divi­sions of Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety as well as Chair of the Advi­so­ry Board for the Inter­na­tion­al Pitts­burgh Coal Con­fer­ence. He has also served as chair or co-chair for over 35 inter­na­tion­al sym­posia, and is cur­rent­ly on eight research jour­nal advi­so­ry boards, includ­ing Ener­gy & Fuels, Catal­y­sis Today, Applied Catal­y­sis B: Envi­ron­men­tal, RSC Catal­y­sis series, Research on Chem­i­cal Inter­me­di­ates, Jour­nal of Fuel Chem­istry and Tech­nol­o­gy, Acta Petrolei Sini­ca, and Coal Con­ver­sion. In addi­tion, he serves on the sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry boards for sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence series and for sev­er­al R&D orga­ni­za­tions worldwide.

A pro­lif­ic author of many high-impact pub­li­ca­tions, Song has deliv­ered 40 ple­nary or keynote lec­tures at inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and 190 invit­ed lec­tures world­wide. He has 170 ref­er­eed jour­nal arti­cles (which received over 4400 cita­tions), 6 ref­er­eed books, 25 book chap­ters, 11 spe­cial jour­nal issues, 20 patents and patent appli­ca­tions, and over 280 con­fer­ence papers. He has also received a num­ber of major awards, includ­ing the 2010 Class of ACS Fel­lows, the Ful­bright Dis­tin­guished Schol­ar from US-UK; the Her­man Pines Award for Out­stand­ing Research in Catal­y­sis from Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go in North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; the Chang Jiang Schol­ar from the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion of Chi­na; Most Cit­ed Authors in Catal­y­sis from Else­vi­er; Out­stand­ing Schol­ar Over­seas from the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sci­ences; the Dis­tin­guished Catal­y­sis Researcher Lec­ture­ship from Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry; the Robin­son Dis­tin­guished Lec­ture­ship from Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta, Cana­da; the NEDO Fel­low­ship and AIST Fel­low­ship Awards from Japan; Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Awards from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Society’s Petro­le­um Chem­istry Divi­sion, and from the Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Pitts­burgh Coal Con­fer­ence. With­in the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, he has received the Wil­son Award for Excel­lence in Research, the Fac­ul­ty Men­tor­ing Award, Inven­tor Incen­tive Awards and the Mate­ri­als Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing Ser­vice Award. . In addi­tion, Song has held vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor­ships with Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don, Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris VI, Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty, Dalian Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Taiyuan Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Tian­jin Uni­ver­si­ty, and Dalian Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Physics as well as Insti­tute of Coal Chem­istry with­in Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sciences. 

A Storch Award Sym­po­sium in Hon­or of Chun­shan Song was held at ACS Fall 2010 Nation­al Meet­ing in Boston dur­ing August 22–26, 2010.