Raul F. Lobo
Chem­i­cal & Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing
at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware

It is my hon­or to announce the 2020 recip­i­ent of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award.  The recip­i­ent must have demon­strat­ed sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship.  After a thor­ough review of the nom­i­nees for the award, it is my plea­sure to announce Prof. Raul F. Lobo of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware as the 2020 recip­i­ent of the CCP Award!

Prof. Lobo is cur­rent­ly the direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy and the Claire D. LeClaire Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. He is rec­og­nized world­wide for his syn­the­sis and appli­ca­tion of micro­p­orous oxides and micro­p­orous cat­a­lysts to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of acid catal­y­sis for C-C bond form­ing reac­tions, methane acti­va­tion and the mech­a­nisms of selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion of NO_x with ammo­nia over Cu-con­tain­ing zeo­lites. He devel­oped struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tions of the nitro­gen-selec­tive adsor­bent zeo­lite Li-X, the most wide­ly used zeo­lite adsor­bent for the pro­duc­tion of dioxy­gen from air using pres­sure swing adsorp­tion. His group iden­ti­fied the key site for N₂ adsorp­tion using a com­bi­na­tion of neu­tron dif­frac­tion and NMR spec­troscopy. More recent­ly his group dis­cov­ered a new type of adsorp­tion site for CO₂ in small-pore zeo­lites: they observed a strong affin­i­ty for CO₂ adsorp­tion in the mid­dle of flat 8-ring win­dows due to a sharp elec­tric field gra­di­ent inter­act­ing with the quadru­pole of CO₂, that is selec­tive to CO₂ over water because mol­e­cules with per­ma­nent dipoles are attract­ed to strong elec­tric fields but not field gra­di­ents. Raul’s group also iden­ti­fied Cu-con­tain­ing zeo­lites that have promis­ing adsorp­tion prop­er­ties due to tem­per­a­ture-depen­dent motion of Cu(I) ions in and out of zeo­lite cav­i­ties. His catal­y­sis con­tri­bu­tions entail sev­er­al advances in hydro­car­bon acti­va­tion, NO_x reduc­tion, and bio­mass upgrad­ing.

Please join me in con­grat­u­lat­ing Prof. Lobo on adding anoth­er acco­lade onto a sto­ried career.