Meeting Program — October 2013

 
Ray­mond J. Gorte
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal & Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing
Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
Philadel­phia, PA 19104
 
Abstract — Ceria-sup­port­ed met­al cat­a­lysts are wide­ly used in auto­mo­tive emis­sions con­trol, where ceria pro­vides “Oxy­gen Stor­age Capac­i­tance”. Ceria-sup­port­ed met­als also have poten­tial for a large num­ber of oth­er appli­ca­tions, rang­ing from methane oxi­da­tion to the water-gas-shift reac­tion, due to the enhanced prop­er­ties that ceria imparts. How­ev­er, the activ­i­ties and sta­bil­i­ties depend strong­ly on the struc­ture of the ceria and whether or not it is mixed with a sec­ond oxide. Cat­a­lyst prop­er­ties are also affect­ed by how cat­alyt­ic met­als inter­act with the sup­port.

In this talk, I will first dis­cuss work aimed at under­stand­ing the role that ceria plays in oxy­gen stor­age and demon­strate that the ther­mo­dy­nam­ic redox prop­er­ties of cat­alyt­ic forms of ceria dif­fer from that of bulk ceria. I will then talk about our efforts to max­i­mize the inter­ac­tions between cat­alyt­ic met­als and ceria, as well as pre­vent sin­ter­ing of the met­al par­ti­cles, through the prepa­ra­tion of core-shell cat­a­lysts deposit­ed onto a func­tion­al­ized-alu­mi­na sup­port. These core-shell cat­a­lysts exhib­it excep­tion­al activ­i­ty for methane oxi­da­tion, with impres­sive sta­bil­i­ty at high tem­per­a­tures.
 
Biog­ra­phy — Ray­mond J. Gorte joined the fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in 1981 after receiv­ing his PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta. He is cur­rent­ly the Rus­sell Pearce and Eliz­a­beth Crim­i­an Heuer Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal & Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing, with a sec­ondary appoint­ment in Mate­ri­als Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing. Since join­ing Penn, Ray has served as Chair­man of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from 1995 to 2000 and was the Carl V. S. Pat­ter­son Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from 1996 through 2001. He received the 1997 Par­ra­vano Award of the Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the 1998 Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club Award, the 1999 Paul Emmett Award of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the 2001 Penn Engi­neer­ing Dis­tin­guished Research Award, and the 2009 AIChE Wil­helm Award. He has served as Chair­man of the Gor­don Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis (1998) and Pro­gram Chair­man of the 12th Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Con­fer­ence (1998). He is an Asso­ciate Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of the Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Soci­ety. His present research inter­ests are focused on elec­trodes for sol­id-oxide fuel cells and the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of core-shell mate­ri­als. He is also known for his research on zeo­lite acid­i­ty and for met­al-sup­port effects, espe­cial­ly with ceria-sup­port­ed pre­cious met­als, used in auto­mo­tive emis­sions con­trol.