Pro­fes­sor Israel E. Wachs of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment of Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty is this year’s recip­i­ent of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers’ (AIChE) Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Prac­tice Award, which will be pre­sent­ed at the Annu­al AIChE meet­ing in San Fran­cis­co the week of Novem­ber 16–21, 2003. The AIChE C&RE Prac­tice Award rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als who have made pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al prac­tice of catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing and is spon­sored by Mer­ck & Com­pa­ny, Inc.

Pro­fes­sor Wachs is being rec­og­nized for his com­mer­cial devel­op­ments of nov­el cat­a­lysts and reac­tion engi­neer­ing appli­ca­tions in the areas of:

1. o‑xylene oxi­da­tion to phthal­ic anhy­dride over sup­port­ed promoted‑V₂O₅/TiO₂ catalysts.
2. Methanol oxi­da­tion to formalde­hyde over bulk met­al oxide catalysts.
3. A new envi­ron­men­tal cat­alyt­ic process that con­verts unde­sir­able waste gas­es from pulp mills to valu­able chem­i­cals (H₂CO, H₂SO₄, ter­penes) and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly elim­i­nates sig­nif­i­cant pol­lut­ing emis­sions of VOCs, NOx, SOx and CO₂.