The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia annu­al Stu­dent Poster Com­pe­ti­tion will be held Thurs­day, March 19, 2009 at the Wilm­ing­ton Hol­i­day Inn, Naa­mans Rd and I-95. To enter, please sub­mit a short abstract of your pro­posed entry before March 2, 2008 to: Joseph Fedeyko (fedeyjm@​jmusa.​com).

The com­pe­ti­tion is restrict­ed to grad­u­ate stu­dents only. Post-docs and senior under­grad­u­ates 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 (i.e. dinner’s on us). The five best posters will be cho­sen with one over­all win­ner who will be invit­ed to present his or her work at the annu­al Catal­y­sis Club sym­po­sium on May 21, 2009.

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.

Dear Col­leagues:

Wel­come to the 60^th sea­son of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia. Since the club was found­ed in 1949, we con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings in catal­y­sis to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions among our fel­low sci­en­tists. Fol­low­ing the path, your offi­cers, list­ed on the left col­umn, have assem­bled a pro­gram of activ­i­ties for the 2008-09 sea­son and seek to pro­vide a myr­i­ad of stim­u­lat­ing and enjoy­able tech­ni­cal meet­ings. We hope that you will join us by reg­is­ter­ing as a mem­ber of the club for the new sea­son and enjoy the pre­sen­ta­tions.

The pro­gram includes a joint meet­ing with the Wilm­ing­ton area sec­tion of AIChE in Octo­ber. Our annu­al stu­dent poster ses­sion will be coor­di­nat­ed by Joseph Fedeyko (John­son Matthey) and held in March. Michael A. Smith (Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty) will orga­nize the Spring Sym­po­sium in May. As intro­duced in the past cou­ple of years, 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 2008-09 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 com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives is avail­able at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​c​o​m​p​R​e​p​.​php.

The cost of the din­ner will again be $30.00 for mem­bers, $15.00 for students/retirees and will include one drink dur­ing the social hour. Walk-ins and non-mem­bers din­ner fees will be $35.00. We strong­ly encour­age advance reser­va­tions for the meet­ings.

We encour­age all mem­bers to use 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, Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den at Elizabeth.​Ross-​Medgaarden@​lyondellbasell.​com.

Please con­tin­ue to sup­port our club by attend­ing and invit­ing your col­leagues to our month­ly meet­ings.

I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing you at the club month­ly meet­ings. Please feel free to con­tact me, or any of the oth­er offi­cers, through­out the year with any com­ments or sug­ges­tions for the club.

Best regards,

Hai-Ying Chen
Chair
610–341-3441
chenh@​jmusa.​com

We would like to express our appre­ci­a­tion for the gen­er­ous sup­port of our spon­sors dur­ing the 2007-08 sea­son.

Gold Son­sors:

• Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries
• The Cat­a­lyst Group
• The PQ Corporation/Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al
• Arke­ma
• Colo­nial Met­als, Inc.
• Hype­r­i­on Catal­y­sis
• Symyx
• BASF
• Du Pont

Sil­ver Spon­sors:

• Lum­mus Tech­nol­o­gy, a CB&I Com­pa­ny
• Air Prod­ucts
• Evonik
• John­son Matthey Cat­a­lysts
• Mil­len­ni­um Inor­gan­ic Chem­i­cals

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia is pleased to announce that Dr. David Olson is the recip­i­ent of the 2008 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award. The award is giv­en for out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship.

The 2008 Award rec­og­nizes Dr. Olson for his inno­v­a­tive and pio­neer­ing work in the field of zeo­lite crys­tal chem­istry, adsorp­tion and catal­y­sis and for his orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship. Dr. Olson has been involved in zeo­lite research for over 40 years, includ­ing 33 years at Mobil and since then has served as Adjunct Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and more recent­ly at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. Illus­tra­tive of his many sig­nif­i­cant sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments are his struc­tur­al works on rare earth X and Y zeo­lites, ZSM-5 and their appli­ca­tion to petro­chem­i­cal process­es, includ­ing the use of ZSM-5 as a xylene iso­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lyst. He is cofounder of the Struc­ture Com­mis­sion of the Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion and served as its chair for over six years. In addi­tion, he orga­nized and for many years chaired the North East Cor­ri­dor Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion (NECZA). He is co-author of the Atlas of Zeo­lite Struc­ture Types, which is a well-known hand­book for researchers in the field of zeo­lites.

Elec­tions for the 2008–2009 offi­cers were held on Thurs­day, April 24, 2008. The elect­ed offi­cers are: Michael Smith, Chair-Elect (Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty); Steve Harries,Treasurer (Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries); Joe Fedeyko, Direc­tor (John­son Matthey); Haim­ing Liu, Direc­tor (Arke­ma Inc.); and Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den, Direc­tor (Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries). Con­grat­u­la­tions!

A recent­ly pub­lished report, Basic Research Needs: Catal­y­sis for Ener­gy, iden­ti­fies research oppor­tu­ni­ties for catal­y­sis to help meet the nation’s ener­gy needs, assess­es the cur­rent state of catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and rec­om­mends fun­da­men­tal research direc­tions to meet the goals described in the report. The report is based on a work­shop held in August, 2007, co-chaired by Alex­is Bell of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, Bruce Gates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis, and Dou­glas Ray of the Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

The report con­clud­ed that, on the basis of cur­rent trends, the Unit­ed States must seri­ous­ly reassess its ener­gy future. The urgent need for fuels in an era of declin­ing resources and press­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns demands a resur­gence in catal­y­sis sci­ence, requir­ing a mas­sive com­mit­ment of pro­gram­mat­ic lead­er­ship and improved exper­i­men­tal and the­o­ret­i­cal meth­ods to make it pos­si­ble to fol­low, in real time, cat­alyt­ic reac­tions on an atom­ic scale on sur­faces that are nonuni­form and laden with large mol­e­cules under­go­ing com­plex com­pet­ing process­es. Ulti­mate­ly, a goal should be devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies for con­vert­ing car­bon diox­ide and water into fuel feed­stocks. Until that future state is reached, new under­stand­ing of more tra­di­tion­al cat­a­lyst form and func­tion can ease the way to a more sus­tain­able ener­gy future.

Details are avail­able in the full 222-page report, which is acces­si­ble on line at www​.sc​.doe​.gov/​b​e​s​/​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​C​A​T​_​r​p​t​.​pdf.

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s Annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test was held on March 13, 2008 with 24 stu­dent entries, plus one post-doc­tor­al pre­sen­ter. Top hon­ors went to Mosha He Zhou from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, with her poster Direct In Situ “Deter­mi­na­tion of the Polar­iza­tion Depen­dence of Adsorp­tion on Fer­ro­elec­tric Sur­faces”. Four run­ners-up include Bill Pyrz (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) with “Direct Obser­va­tion of the MoVNbTeO M1 Phase Using aber­ra­tion-cor­rect­ed High-Res­o­lu­tion STEM”; Gong Zhou (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia) with “Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Equi­lib­ri­um Redox Prop­er­ties for Ceria-based Mixed Oxides”; Carl Men­ning (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) with “Gen­er­al Trends in the Sta­bil­i­ty of Mono­lay­er Bimetal­lic Sur­faces”; and Paul Dim­ick (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty) with “Exam­in­ing the Sur­face of a Syn­er­gis­tic Pt-Rh/γ-Al2O3 Cat­a­lyst with In-situ FTIR Spec­troscopy Using NO as a Probe Mol­e­cule”. Mosha Zhou will be pre­sent­ing a talk on her work at the Catal­y­sis Club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium, May 22, 2008.