Tag Archives: CCP

Graduate Student Poster Competition, Call for Abstracts

This is the first call for posters for the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test to be held Thurs­day, Octo­ber 21, 2010 at the Wilm­ing­ton Hol­i­day Inn, Naa­mans Rd and I-95 at 5 PM.

To enter, please sub­mit a short abstract of your pro­posed entry before Octo­ber 7, 2010 to Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den (elizabeth.​ross-​medgaarden@​lyondellbasell.​com)

The com­pe­ti­tion is restrict­ed to grad­u­ate stu­dents. Post-docs are wel­come to present their posters but are not eli­gi­ble for prizes. All poster pre­sen­ters should be list­ed as the first author, and will be guests of the Catal­y­sis Club for the evening. Catal­y­sis Club mem­bers and guests will cast their votes for favorite poster; then a select pan­el of indus­tri­al judges will select the 5 best posters from the top 10 posters. A total prize award of $550 will be dis­trib­uted between the win­ners; $150 will go to the over­all win­ner and $100 each to the 4 oth­er win­ners. The over­all win­ner will be invit­ed to present his or her work at the Catal­y­sis Club’s annu­al sym­po­sium in May 2011.

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia is very proud of this event and views it as one of the region’s pre­mier oppor­tu­ni­ties for grad­u­ate stu­dents to show­case their work with the local chem­i­cal indus­try pro­fes­sion­als. All grad­u­ate stu­dents whose work is either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy are encour­aged to sub­mit entries.

2010–2011 Meeting Program

Thurs­day, 23-Sep-20102010 CCP Award Lec­ture
Struc­tur­al Effects on the Adsorp­tive Prop­er­ties of Mol­e­c­u­lar Sieves
Dr. Charles Coe, Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty
Announce­ment »
Thurs­day, 21-Oct-2010Stu­dent Poster Com­pe­ti­tion
Thurs­day, 21-Oct-2010Devel­op­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal­ly Benign Ener­gy Tech­nolo­gies
Prof. Mar­co Castal­di, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty
Announce­ment »
Thurs­day, 18-Nov-2010Struc­ture Prop­er­ty Rela­tion­ships of Sup­port­ed Pt/3d Bimetal­lic Cat­a­lysts
Bill Lon­er­gan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
Stu­dent Pre­sen­ta­tion
Thurs­day, 18-Nov-2010Self-Mov­ing Cat­alyt­ic Nanomo­tors
Prof. Ayus­man Sen, Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty
Announce­ment »
Thurs­day, 20-Jan-2011X-Ray Spec­troscopy in Catal­y­sis Research: Appli­ca­tion to Au Cat­a­lysts
Jef­frey Miller, Argonne Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry
2010 Ciap­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship Awardee
Announce­ment »
Thurs­day, 17-Feb-2011Nom­i­na­tion of Offi­cers for the 2011–2012 Sea­son
Thurs­day, 17-Feb-2011Bridg­ing the Gap between Het­ero­ge­neous and Enzyme Catal­y­sis: In Situ Spec­tro­scop­ic Study of Vana­di­um Haloper­ox­i­dase Enzyme Func­tion­al Mim­ics
Julie E. Moli­nari, Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty
Stu­dent Pre­sen­ta­tion
Thurs­day, 17-Feb-2011A the­o­ret­i­cal per­spec­tive of the effect of the sup­port in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis: The exam­ple of vana­dia cat­a­lysts for selec­tive oxi­da­tion
Dr. Veron­i­ca Gan­duglia-Pirovano, Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and Petro­le­um Chem­istry, Madrid
Announce­ment »
Thurs­day, 17-Mar-2011Sys­tem­at­ic Stud­ies of the Cath­ode-Elec­trolyte Inter­face in Sol­id Oxide Fuel Cell Cath­odes
Rain­er Kun­gas, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
Stu­dent Pre­sen­ta­tion
Thurs­day, 17-Mar-2011Ori­gin of Acid­i­ty of Pt-Re/C Bimetal­lic Cat­a­lyst for the Aque­ous Phase Reform­ing of Glyc­erol
David L. King, Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry
Announce­ment »
Thurs­day, 14-Apr-2011Elec­tion of New Offi­cers for the 2011–2012 Sea­son
Thurs­day, 14-Apr-2011Com­plex oxides as self-regen­er­at­ing cat­a­lysts
Prof. Susan­nah Scott, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Bar­bara
Announce­ment »
Mon­day, May-2011Spring Sym­po­sium
Joseph Fedeyko, Orga­niz­er

Announcement of the 2010-11 Season of the Catalysis Club of Philadelphia

Dear Col­leagues:

Wel­come to the new sea­son of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia. Since the club was found­ed in 1949, we con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions among our fel­low catal­y­sis sci­en­tists. Your offi­cers, list­ed on the left, have assem­bled a stim­u­lat­ing pro­gram of activ­i­ties for the 2010-11 sea­son. We hope that you will join us by reg­is­ter­ing as a mem­ber of the club for the new sea­son and enjoy our month­ly tech­ni­cal pro­gram.

Our tech­ni­cal pro­grams, coor­di­nat­ed by Bob Cochran will start with Dr. Chuck Coe, pre­vi­ous­ly at Air­Prod­ucts and cur­rent­ly at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty, win­ner of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia 2009-10 award in Sep­tem­ber. Dr. Coe was rec­og­nized for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to adsorp­tion sci­ence, catal­y­sis, and appli­ca­tions of cat­a­lysts for organ­ic syn­the­ses. The Award was announced at the 2010 Spring Sym­po­sium.

Our annu­al stu­dent poster ses­sion will be coor­di­nat­ed by Eliz­a­beth Ross-Megaar­den (Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries) and held in Octo­ber. Joe Fedeyko of John­son Matthey will orga­nize the Spring Sym­po­sium in May. We will con­tin­ue to have a brief pre­sen­ta­tion by a local grad­u­ate stu­dent or post-doc pri­or to the main lec­ture at some of the month­ly meet­ings.

Dues for the new sea­son will remain at $10.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $5.00 to the nation­al club). Dues for stu­dents will be $6.00. You can pay your dues to your com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to our trea­sur­er (Steve Har­ris), or at the month­ly meet­ings. A list of rep­re­sen­ta­tives is avail­able at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​c​o​m​p​R​e​p​.​php.

The cost of the din­ner will be $35.00 for mem­bers, $20.00 for students/retirees and will include one drink dur­ing the social hour. Walk-ins and non-mem­bers din­ner fees will be $40.00. We strong­ly encour­age advance reser­va­tions for the meet­ings.

Please vis­it our web­site at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org to receive lat­est infor­ma­tion on month­ly meet­ings. If you would like to receive our month­ly announce­ments or need to update your con­tact infor­ma­tion, please con­tact our Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor, Wei Huang (Air Liq­uide) at wei.​huang@​airliquide.​com.

The strength of our club has always revolved around our mem­bers and our month­ly meet­ings. Your par­tic­i­pa­tion in our month­ly meet­ings is essen­tial to the well being of our club.

I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing you at our month­ly meet­ings. Do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us with any com­ments or sug­ges­tions for the club.

Best regards,

Dion G. Vla­chos
Chair
302–831-2830
vlachos@​udel.​edu

Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Officers for the 2010 – 2011 Season

In accord with its bylaws, the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia held annu­al elec­tions for offi­cers dur­ing the April meet­ing. For the 2010–2011 year, the offi­cers will be:

  • Dion Vla­chos, Chair
  • Michael Smith, Past-Chair
  • Joe Fedeyko, Chair-Elect
  • Steve Har­ris, Trea­sur­er
  • Bjorn Mod­en, Direc­tor
  • Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den, Direc­tor
  • Wei Huang, Direc­tor

In addi­tion, four oth­er offi­cers are appoint­ed by the Chair of the club. For the 2010-11 sea­son these are:

  • Parag Shah, Sec­re­tary
  • Open, Pro­gram Chair
  • Kevin Bakhmut­sky, Arrange­ments Chair
  • Anne Gaffney, NACS Rep­re­sen­ta­tive

2010 Spring Symposium Summary

The Spring CCP sym­po­sium was held at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty on May 13, 2010. The sym­po­sium focused on ener­gy and envi­ron­men­tal issues and brought togeth­er a mix of aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al per­spec­tives. Top­ics dis­cussed include ener­gy needs and effi­cien­cy, renew­able chem­i­cals, bio­mass pro­duc­tion, elec­tro­catal­y­sis, fuel cells, mate­ri­als for renew­ables, and emis­sion con­trol.

The sym­po­sium was well attend­ed with near­ly 90 atten­dees. More details can be found at www​.catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​s​y​m​p​1​0​.​php. Thanks to all the pre­sen­ters and atten­dees, Mike Smith for being an excel­lent local host, Alan Stot­tle­my­er (meet­ing coor­di­na­tor and ad hoc trea­sur­er) and Mar­guerite Mahoney of UD for orga­niz­ing reg­is­tra­tion and oth­er meet­ing logis­tics.

Chuck Coe is the recipient of the 2010 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award

Dr. Chuck Coe

The catal­y­sis club of Philadel­phia is pleased to announce Dr. Chuck Coe as the recip­i­ent of the 2010 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award, in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to adsorp­tion sci­ence, catal­y­sis, and appli­ca­tions of cat­a­lysts for organ­ic syn­the­ses.

Chuck joined the Chem­i­cal Addi­tives divi­sion of Air Prod­ucts and Chem­i­cals after he obtained his PhD in inor­gan­ic chem­istry from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty. While at Air Prod­ucts, Chuck devel­oped a com­mer­cial cat­a­lyst for accel­er­at­ing the cure of poly­ester sheet mold­ed plas­tics. This prod­uct is still being sold some 30 years lat­er. Ear­ly in Chuck’s career, he trans­ferred to the Cor­po­rate research group at the Com­pa­ny head­quar­ters and devel­oped an exten­sive exper­tise in mol­e­c­u­lar sieve sci­ence, allow­ing him to con­tribute to a num­ber of impor­tant suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial­ly improved prod­ucts and process offer­ings. For many years, he teamed with project lead­ers across busi­ness units to enable the devel­op­ment of improved adsor­bents and cat­a­lysts based on build­ing structure/property rela­tion­ships tar­get­ed ini­tial­ly at spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions. He led the team that cre­at­ed improved adsor­bents for the non-cryo­genic pro­duc­tion of oxy­gen and was a major con­trib­u­tor to improve­ments in car­bon mol­e­c­u­lar sieves that allowed the pro­duc­tion of high puri­ty nitro­gen. His great­est com­mer­cial suc­cess involved the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of an adsor­bent used to puri­fy nitro­gen tri­flu­o­ride that is used in the pro­duc­tion of inte­grat­ed cir­cuits.

Chuck was also instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing new ana­lyt­i­cal meth­ods and instru­men­ta­tion to obtain fun­da­men­tal infor­ma­tion on small exper­i­men­tal sam­ples. In this area, his most notable accom­plish­ment has been estab­lish­ing an advanced high pres­sure microbal­ance sys­tem that oper­ates up to 100 atm in the pres­ence of up to 50 vol% steam that sup­ports car­bon diox­ide cap­ture, hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, and inte­grat­ed fuel/energy process­es. Chuck was also a key mem­ber of the DOE Cen­ter of Excel­lence on Car­bon-cen­tered Hydro­gen Stor­age Mate­ri­als and cre­at­ed a unique dif­fer­en­tial vol­u­met­ric adsorp­tion appa­ra­tus for mea­sur­ing high pres­sure hydro­gen isotherms on 50 mg sam­ples, enabling the devel­op­ment of advanced hydro­gen stor­age mate­ri­als. Before retir­ing from Air Prod­ucts, Chuck was named a strate­gic tech­nol­o­gist for the Cor­po­ra­tion and pro­vid­ed inter­nal con­sul­ta­tion for a broad range of mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion issues involv­ing cat­a­lysts, adsor­bents, and mem­branes. His accom­plish­ments have led to 34 issued US patents, 29 peer-reviewed pub­li­ca­tions, and numer­ous invit­ed lec­tures.

Since retir­ing, Chuck has joined the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at Vil­lano­va and is shar­ing his knowl­edge with the next gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists.

Please join us in con­grat­u­lat­ing Chuck on receiv­ing the 2010 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia award.

Elections for the 2010-11 Season Executive Committee

Elec­tions for the 2010-11 Club Offi­cers will be held on Thurs­day, April 22 dur­ing din­ner. The can­di­dates are:

Chair-Elect: Joe Fedeyko and Roger Grey
Trea­sur­er: Ist­van Halasz and Stephen Har­ris
Direc­tors: Trap­ti Chaubey, Wei Huang, Bjorn Mod­en, Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den and Parag Shah

Biographical sketches of the candidates

Chair-Elect

  • Joe Fedeyko – Joe is cur­rent­ly a Staff Sci­en­tist at John­son Matthey Inc., Emis­sion Con­trol Tech­nolo­gies where he devel­ops cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion of NOx. He grad­u­at­ed in 2001 from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty with a B.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and in 2006 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware with a Ph. D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing under the advise­ment of Raul Lobo. He’s been a mem­ber of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club for the past 8 years serv­ing as a pro­gram chair (2007) and a direc­tor (2008, 2009).
  • Roger Grey – Roger Grey is a Research Sci­en­tist at Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, where he has been employed for almost thir­ty years, cur­rent­ly work­ing in the field of oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis. Pri­or to Lyon­dell, Grey worked at Allied Chem­i­cal for five years, main­ly in the field of homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis. He received his Ph.D. in chem­istry from Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1973 and was a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at UCLA for two years. Grey has been an active mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for many years. He has served as Pro­gram Chair, Direc­tor, Trea­sur­er, and as Chair of the Club. He also served as a co-chair of the poster ses­sion pro­gram for the 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing.

Trea­sur­er

  • Ist­van Halasz – Ist­van is a Prin­ci­pal Chemist at PQ Cor­po­ra­tion with a Ph. D. from the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. His diverse aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al research back­ground includes prod­uct and process devel­op­ment, mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, and sol­id state chem­istry. He has edit­ed one book and (co)authored 100 papers, 8 patents, and 63 con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions. Ist­van has been an ACS and North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety mem­ber since 1990, and has held var­i­ous board posi­tions at CCP includ­ing chair.
  • Stephen Har­ris – Stephen Har­ris received a BS in chem­istry from Muh­len­berg Col­lege and a Ph.D. in phys­i­cal organ­ic chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester. His inter­ests are in process design and opti­miza­tion using homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts and dif­fer­en­tial sep­a­ra­tion tech­nolo­gies. He has been Trea­sur­er, Arrange­ments Chair, and Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor for the CCP.

Direc­tors

  • Trap­ti Chaubey – Trap­ti Chaubey earned her M.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. Dur­ing her Master’s she worked with Dr. Hamid Aras­toopour on recy­cling waste rub­ber using Sol­id State Shear Extru­sion process. She joined Air Liq­uide in 2004 and has worked on sev­er­al diverse research top­ics includ­ing purifi­ca­tion process­es for semi­con­duc­tor indus­try, syn­gas reform­ing and CO2 cap­ture and mit­i­ga­tion tech­niques. At Air Liq­uide she has designed sev­er­al com­plex exper­i­men­tal test bench­es and worked on mul­ti­ple projects involv­ing poly­mer­iza­tion reac­tion stud­ies.
  • Wei Huang – Wei Huang is a Research Sci­en­tist at Gas Pro­duc­tion & Hydro­gen Ener­gy Appli­ca­tions Group, DELAWARE RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY CENTER (DRTC) USA, Air Liq­uide. Wei obtained her Ph.D degree from Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. She was co-advised by Prof. Jing­guang G. Chen and Prof. Raul F. Lobo. Her exper­tise is cat­a­lyst design and syn­the­sis, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion by var­i­ous tech­niques and pilot plant design and con­struc­tion. After grad­u­ate from UD, she joined Air Liq­uide in Oct. 2007 as a Research Sci­en­tist. Cur­rent­ly, she works on sev­er­al projects relat­ed to H2 and CO pro­duc­tion and ener­gy appli­ca­tion.
  • Bjorn Mod­en – Bjorn Mod­en is cur­rent­ly a Research Engi­neer at Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al at the PQ Cor­po­ra­tion R&D cen­ter in Con­shohock­en, PA, where he is work­ing on zeo­lite devel­op­ment for envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions. He received his Ph. D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley under the direc­tion of Enrique Igle­sia in 2006 and his under­grad­u­ate degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Roy­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (KTH), Stock­holm in 2000. Bjorn has been the Sec­re­tary of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2007.
  • Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den – Eliz­a­beth is a Research Engi­neer with Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries work­ing in the Process Tech­nol­o­gy R&D group. She joined Lyon­dell­Basell direct­ly after receiv­ing her Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty under the direc­tion of Israel Wachs in Sep­tem­ber 2007 and Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lafayette Col­lege in 2002. Elizabeth’s back­ground includes het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis syn­the­sis and opti­miza­tion, reac­tion and opti­cal spec­troscopy tech­niques, process reac­tion opti­miza­tion and process design, devel­op­ment and scale-up of new tech­nolo­gies. Eliz­a­beth has been a mem­ber of ACS and AIChE since 2000 and a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for the past 8 years and has served as a club Direc­tor since 2008.
  • Parag Shah – Parag is a Research Chemist at PQ Cor­po­ra­tion and is involved in devel­op­ing improved sil­i­ca-based sup­ports, new poly­olefin cat­a­lysts and process/product devel­op­ment for emerg­ing cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies. In 2008 he received his Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia under the guid­ance of Prof. Ray­mond J. Gorte. His the­sis work focused on inves­ti­gat­ing the ther­mo­dy­nam­ic prop­er­ties of met­al-oxide cat­a­lysts. Parag earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bom­bay (India), and sub­se­quent­ly did a Mas­ters in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente (The Nether­lands), with empha­sis on Process Devel­op­ment and Design. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2004.