Pro­fes­sor Anders Hol­men (Nor­we­gian Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy) has been cho­sen as the recip­i­ent of the 2010 Award for Excel­lence in Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion. The Award is pre­sent­ed every three years dur­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion Sym­po­sium to rec­og­nize endur­ing and sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy for the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas to valu­able prod­ucts. The pre­vi­ous award recip­i­ents are Jack Lunsford, Jens Ros­trup-Nielsen, Lan­ny Schmidt, Enrique Igle­sia, and David Trimm.

Pro­fes­sor Hol­men is being rec­og­nized for his achieve­ments in advanc­ing con­cepts and prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of direct and indi­rect routes for the effi­cient uti­liza­tion of nat­ur­al gas. He has con­tributed fun­da­men­tal con­cepts for the con­ver­sion of methane to acety­lene in high-tem­per­a­ture short-con­tact time reac­tors. His research group has devel­oped and used meth­ods for mea­sur­ing the dynam­ics of car­bon for­ma­tion dur­ing methane reac­tions at con­di­tions rel­e­vant to indus­tri­al prac­tice and for the elu­ci­da­tion of the kinet­ics and mech­a­nism of par­tial oxi­da­tion of light alka­nes. Through­out his career, Pro­fes­sor Hol­men has con­tributed to our under­stand­ing and prac­tice of the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis, specif­i­cal­ly by unrav­el­ing the com­plex effects of water on reac­tion rate and selec­tiv­i­ty and the role of Co crys­tal­lite size and of sup­ports on cat­a­lyst reac­tiv­i­ty and stability.

The award con­sists of a plaque and a mon­e­tary prize, which will pre­sent­ed at the 9th Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion Sym­po­sium (NGCS) to be held in Lyon, France (May 30-June 3, 2010). Pro­fes­sor Hol­men will also present the Award Ple­nary Lec­ture dur­ing this meeting.

The selec­tion com­mit­tee for this Award con­sists of pre­vi­ous awardees togeth­er with sev­er­al mem­bers of the NGCS Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Board. Nom­i­na­tions are con­sid­ered from a broad cross-sec­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al mem­bers of the nat­ur­al gas con­ver­sion community.