Ciapetta Award Lecture: Novel Zeolite Catalysts for Diesel Emission Applications

Meeting Program — January 2017

Ahmad Moini
Ahmad Moi­ni
BASF Cor­po­ra­tion

 

Abstract — Auto­mo­tive exhaust con­di­tions present unique chal­lenges for the design of effec­tive cat­a­lysts. In addi­tion to the need for cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty over a wide tem­per­a­ture range, the cat­a­lyst must show dura­bil­i­ty towards extreme hydrother­mal aging con­di­tions. The use of zeolitic mate­ri­als under such con­di­tions is espe­cial­ly chal­leng­ing due to the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of zeo­lites to steam aging. The BASF dis­cov­ery of the Cu-CHA cat­a­lyst for selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion (SCR) of NOx demon­strat­ed an effec­tive bal­ance between favor­able active sites and zeo­lite frame­work dura­bil­i­ty. It also paved the way for the imple­men­ta­tion of urea SCR as the key approach for NOx reduc­tion in diesel vehi­cles. This pre­sen­ta­tion will high­light the devel­op­ment of Cu-CHA as the lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy for diesel emis­sion appli­ca­tions. Spe­cif­ic focus will be placed on the syn­the­sis and struc­tur­al fea­tures of the zeo­lite. In addi­tion, there will be a dis­cus­sion of spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and mod­el­ing approach­es focus­ing on the unique attrib­ut­es of the met­al active sites and the inter­ac­tion of these met­al species with the zeo­lite frame­work.

Biog­ra­phy — Dr. Ahmad Moi­ni is a Research Fel­low at BASF Cor­po­ra­tion in Iselin, NJ. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chem­istry from Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, and held a post­doc­tor­al appoint­ment at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty. Dr. Moi­ni start­ed his career at Mobil Research & Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (now Exxon­Mo­bil), where he con­duct­ed research on micro­p­orous mate­ri­als. With a focus on explorato­ry zeo­lite syn­the­sis, he stud­ied the mech­a­nism of zeo­lite crys­tal­liza­tion and the role of spe­cif­ic class­es of organ­ic direct­ing agents in the for­ma­tion of var­i­ous zeo­lite frame­works. He joined Engel­hard Cor­po­ra­tion (now BASF) in 1996. Since then, his pri­ma­ry research inter­ests have been in the area of mate­ri­als syn­the­sis, direct­ed at a range of cat­alyt­ic and func­tion­al appli­ca­tions. He applied high through­put meth­ods for the syn­the­sis and eval­u­a­tion of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als, and used these tools for the devel­op­ment of new prod­ucts. A sig­nif­i­cant part of his work has been direct­ed towards cat­a­lysts for envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions. These efforts, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the extend­ed BASF team, led to the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of Cu-CHA cat­a­lyst for selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion (SCR) of NOx from diesel vehi­cles. He holds 48 US patents relat­ing to var­i­ous aspects of mate­ri­als and cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment.