Author Archives: Edrick Morales

Reducibility of Cobalt Supported on SBA-15 and Zirconia for Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis

Kevin Bakhmut­sky1, Noah Wieder1, Thomas Bal­das­sare2, Michael A. Smith2 and Ray­mond J. Gorte1
1Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
2Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty

 
Abstract — High demand for petro­le­um and the ris­ing costs of the crude oil feed­stock have spurred a great deal of inter­est in the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas into liq­uid fuels via the gas-to-liq­uids (GTL) process.

As a key step in the process, the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis (FTS) con­verts syn­gas (CO and H2) to pro­duce hydro­car­bons. Cobalt cat­a­lysts are pref­er­en­tial­ly used in the low tem­per­a­ture Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis because of their high activ­i­ty, paraf­fin selec­tiv­i­ty and rel­a­tive resis­tance to oxi­da­tion [1,2]. How­ev­er, stud­ies have shown that dis­persed cobalt on cat­a­lyst sup­ports tends to deac­ti­vate into sta­ble cobalt (II) oxide or irre­ducible cobalt sup­port mixed com­pounds [3–5]. This decrease of active cobalt met­al sites has pri­mar­i­ly been attrib­uted to oxi­da­tion by water. Ther­mo­dy­nam­ic data for bulk cobalt sug­gests oth­er­wise, as oxi­da­tion of cobalt at FTS oper­at­ing con­di­tions would not be expect­ed. Coulo­met­ric titra­tion was used to exam­ine redox char­ac­ter­is­tics of cobalt sup­port­ed on meso­porous sil­i­ca and zir­co­nia. Exper­i­men­tal data of cobalt con­strained by pore size in a meso­porous sil­i­ca sup­port sug­gests that oxi­da­tion ener­get­ics of Co nanopar­ti­cles are near­ly iden­ti­cal to those of bulk par­ti­cles [6]. How­ev­er, ther­mo­dy­nam­ic mea­sure­ments of cobalt sup­port­ed on zir­co­nia revealed that low cobalt load­ing sam­ples do appear to under­go par­tial oxi­da­tion at FTS con­di­tions, unlike bulk cobalt and high­er cobalt load­ing sam­ples. Fur­ther exper­i­ments have sug­gest­ed that the appar­ent dis­tinc­tion in redox prop­er­ties is like­ly due to sup­port inter­ac­tions of cobalt oxide with the zir­co­nia rather than an inher­ent dif­fer­ence in ther­mo­dy­nam­ics of bulk and dis­persed cobalt.

 
Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy – Kevin Bakhmut­sky com­plet­ed his under­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, obtain­ing a B.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in 2007. Kevin has since worked on his doc­tor­al research at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and is present­ly in his fourth year of study as a mem­ber of Dr. Ray­mond J. Gorte’s research group. Kevin’s the­sis research focus­es on catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing, with an empha­sis on a ther­mo­dy­nam­ic approach to met­al-sup­port inter­ac­tions.

Shape Selectivity Revisited: Higher Catalytic Rates in Smaller Zeolite Channels

Aditya Bhan
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence
Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta
Twin Cities
 
Abstract — Zeo­lites are crys­talline inor­gan­ic frame­work oxides with chan­nel and pock­et dimen­sions typ­i­cal­ly small­er than 1 nanome­ter. Their con­strained envi­ron­ments are well known to select for chem­i­cal reac­tions via steric mech­a­nisms, typ­i­cal­ly, by exclu­sion of mol­e­cules or tran­si­tion states based on size. The strong effects of pore size and shape as they become com­men­su­rate with those of reac­tant species and the con­comi­tant effects on the enthalpy and entropy of adsorp­tion have also been broad­ly and con­vinc­ing­ly not­ed. We inquire instead, what are the effects of con­fine­ment in small chan­nels?

In this talk, I will present three exam­ples where reac­tiv­i­ty in small 8-mem­bered ring pock­ets of H-MOR dif­fers from that in larg­er 12-mem­bered ring chan­nels of MOR.

(i) We show that the appar­ent effects of pro­ton den­si­ty and of hydrox­yl group envi­ron­ment on DME car­bony­la­tion turnover rates reflect instead the remark­able speci­fici­ty of eight-mem­bered ring zeo­lite chan­nels in accel­er­at­ing kinet­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant *CH3-CO reac­tion steps.

(ii) In zeo­lite pores large enough to accom­mo­date ethanol dimers, ethanol pref­er­en­tial­ly dehy­drates via a bimol­e­c­u­lar path­way to gen­er­ate diethyl ether since the for­ma­tion of ethanol dimer­ic species is ener­get­i­cal­ly more favor­able than the for­ma­tion of ethanol monomers. In zeo­lite chan­nels too small to accom­mo­date ethanol dimers, ethanol is selec­tive­ly dehy­drat­ed via a uni­mol­e­c­u­lar reac­tion path­way to gen­er­ate eth­yl­ene.

(iii) For iso­mer­iza­tion reac­tions of n-hexa­ne, 8-MR chan­nels of H-MOR min­i­mize the free ener­gy of required car­bo­ca­tion­ic tran­si­tion states, pos­si­bly via par­tial con­fine­ment effects that increase the entropy of the tran­si­tion state at the expense of the reac­tion enthalpy.

These find­ings show that con­fine­ment in zeo­lite chan­nels influ­ences rate and selec­tiv­i­ty of hydro­car­bon reac­tions more fun­da­men­tal­ly than sim­ple con­sid­er­a­tions of size and shape.
 
Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Aditya Bhan received his Bach­e­lor of Tech­nol­o­gy (B. Tech.) in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from IIT Kan­pur in 2000. Sub­se­quent­ly, he moved to West Lafayette, Indi­ana and joined the group of Nick Del­gass at Pur­due, where he devel­oped micro­ki­net­ic mod­els to describe propane arom­a­ti­za­tion on pro­ton- and gal­li­um- form ZSM-5 mate­ri­als for his PhD. In 2005, he moved to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley to pur­sue post-doc­tor­al stud­ies in Pro­fes­sor Enrique Iglesia’s group to study the kinet­ics, mech­a­nism, and site require­ments of dimethyl ether car­bony­la­tion. In Sep­tem­ber 2007, Dr. Bhan took up his present posi­tion as an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta. Dr. Bhan leads a research group that focus­es on the struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of inor­gan­ic mol­e­c­u­lar sieve cat­a­lysts use­ful in ener­gy con­ver­sion and petro­chem­i­cal syn­the­sis. His research at Min­neso­ta has been rec­og­nized with the McK­night Land Grant Pro­fes­sor and 3M Non-tenured Fac­ul­ty awards.

Election of Club Officers for the 2011–2012 Season

Elec­tions of new offi­cers will be held on Thurs­day April 14, 2011. This year can­di­dates for Chair-Elect are Bjorn Mod­en and Chuck Coe; Trea­sur­er are Ist­van Halasz and Stephen Har­ris; and Direc­tors are Agnes Kovacs, Raul Lobo, Michael Smith, Ivan Baldy­chev and Erich Weigert. Their bio­graph­i­cal sketch­es are list­ed below.

Biogra­phies
Chair-Elect:
Bjorn Mod­en — Bjorn Mod­en is cur­rent­ly a Senior 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 is cur­rent­ly the Spon­sor­ship Direc­tor of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia and was the Sec­re­tary for the club from 2007 to 2010.

Chuck Coe — After obtain­ing his PhD in inor­gan­ic chem­istry from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty, Chuck joined the Chem­i­cal Addi­tives divi­sion of Air Prod­ucts and Chem­i­cals Ear­ly in Chuck’s career he trans­ferred to the cor­po­rate research group at the com­pa­ny head­quar­ters where he devel­oped an exten­sive exper­tise in mol­e­c­u­lar sieve sci­ence. Before retir­ing from Air Prod­ucts, Chuck was named a strate­gic tech­nol­o­gist for the Cor­po­ra­tion and pro­vid­ed inter­nal con­sul­ta­tion on a broad range of mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion issues involv­ing cat­a­lysts and adsor­bents.

Chuck has been an active mem­ber of the Philadel­phia and NY Catal­y­sis Clubs for over thir­ty years. Ear­li­er in his career he served as an offi­cer in the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club. He received the 2010 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award.

Since retir­ing, Chuck has joined the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at Vil­lano­va as a Vis­it­ing Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor and is shar­ing his knowl­edge with the next gen­er­a­tion of engi­neers and sci­en­tists.

Trea­sur­er:
Ist­van Halasz — Born, edu­cat­ed, and start­ed teaching/research car­ri­er in Hun­gary. Obtained Ph. D. from the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. Has 12 years aca­d­e­m­ic and 21 years indus­tri­al research expe­ri­ence, main­ly relat­ed to prod­uct and process devel­op­ment for petro­chem­i­cal and fine chem­i­cal indus­try, mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, and sol­id state chem­istry. Author of 101 papers, 9 patents, and 60 con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions. ACS and North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety mem­ber since 1990. 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. He has been Trea­sur­er, Arrange­ments Chair, and Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor for the CCP.

Direc­tors:
Agi Kovacs — Agnes Derecskei-Kovacs was born and raised in Hun­gary. She grad­u­at­ed from the Lajos Kos­suth Uni­ver­si­ty in Debre­cen, Hun­gary major­ing in Physics and earned her PhD in Atom­ic and Mol­e­c­u­lar Physics while work­ing for the Depart­ment of The­o­ret­i­cal Physics at the same uni­ver­si­ty. With her hus­band and daugh­ter, she came to the US in 1990 and earned a sec­ond degree in Math­e­mat­i­cal Sciences/Chemistry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Arling­ton. After a year of post­doc, she worked for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont as a vis­it­ing assis­tant pro­fes­sor and for the Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty as the Man­ag­er of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Mol­e­c­u­lar Sim­u­la­tions. She start­ed her indus­tri­al car­ri­er at Mil­len­ni­um Chem­i­cals in the Bal­ti­more area in 2000 as a mol­e­c­u­lar mod­el­er and start­ed to attend the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club meet­ings reg­u­lar­ly when her com­pa­ny became part of Lyon­dell (now Lyon­dell­Basell). Agnes joined Air Prod­ucts a year ago work­ing for the Com­pu­ta­tion­al Mod­el­ing Cen­ter as a Research Asso­ciate. In this role, she is respon­si­ble for the com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry sup­port glob­al­ly for all Air Prod­ucts busi­ness­es. She is going to be the company’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia next month. Agnes is mar­ried, her hus­band Bela is also a reg­u­lar attendee at the Club’s meet­ings. They have a daugh­ter, Eva, cur­rent­ly work­ing on her res­i­den­cy in Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine. Agnes enjoys read­ing, gar­den­ing and exer­cis­ing when her busy sched­ule allows.

Raul Lobo — Not avail­able at this time.

Michael Smith — Dr Michael A. Smith is cur­rent­ly an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty. He received his BS in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lafayette Col­lege, then worked in a vari­ety of assign­ments with the DuPont Com­pa­ny for 17 years. Dr. Smith returned to school to obtain a Mas­ters at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty, and his PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 2004. Since he has work as a research sci­en­tist for an SBIR start­up, and has been at Vil­lano­va since 2005. Dr Smith’s research inter­ests include the syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of nov­el nano-struc­tured mate­ri­als made using col­loidal self-assem­bly and sol-gel tech­niques; het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal kinet­ics.

Ivan Baldy­chev — Ivan Baldy­chev is a Research Engi­neer at DuPont Com­pa­ny and is involved in devel­op­ing new process­es for pro­duc­tion of flu­o­ro­prod­ucts. In 2011 he received his PhD 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. Ivan earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2006.

Erich Weigert — Erich com­plet­ed his grad­u­ate work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in the depart­ment of Mate­ri­als Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing. His the­sis work was a study of tung­sten mono-car­bides as alter­na­tive elec­tro­cat­a­lysts for direct methanol fuel cells. After grad­u­at­ing in 2007, Erich joined John­son Matthey as a prod­uct devel­op­ment sci­en­tist. His ini­tial work focused on the design of SCR cat­a­lysts for diesel appli­ca­tions. In 2008 Erich joined the light duty diesel appli­ca­tions group in JM to con­tin­ue devel­op­ment work for light duty diesel on-road vehi­cles. Still present­ly in this role, he is involved with the design, scale up, and test­ing of a vari­ety of light duty diesel after treat­ment cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies.

Prof. Jingguang Chen is the recipient of the 2011 Herman Pines Award in Catalysis

Prof. Jing­guang Chen (Claire D. LeClaire Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) is the recip­i­ent of Catal­y­sis Club of Chicago’s 2011 Her­man Pines Award. The Award is pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to catal­y­sis in either fun­da­men­tal research or indus­tri­al process­es. The award includes a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um of $1000 and trav­el reim­burse­ment as a ple­nary speak­er at 2011 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium. The award will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the sym­po­sium at BP Research Cen­ter (Naperville, IL) on May 19, 2011.

Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen is a world leader in sur­face sci­ence stud­ies of car­bide and bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts and their indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions. He has made great leaps toward clos­ing the long stand­ing, well-known mate­ri­als and pres­sure gaps in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis that are essen­tial to con­vert fun­da­men­tal sur­face sci­ence stud­ies into indus­tri­al prac­tice. This has been achieved by a unique com­bi­na­tion of sur­face sci­ence, the­o­ret­i­cal mod­el­ing, catal­y­sis and in-situ reac­tor stud­ies lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of nov­el con­cepts and cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als for a wide range of chem­i­cal reac­tions. In par­al­lel, Prof. Chen has excelled in a vari­ety of lead­er­ship roles to advance sur­face sci­ence and catal­y­sis. He has pub­lished over 200 papers in var­i­ous catal­y­sis and sur­face sci­ence jour­nals and writ­ten crit­i­cal reviews for sev­er­al lead­ing review jour­nals, includ­ing Chem­i­cal Reviews and Sur­face Sci­ence Reports. He is the inven­tor or co-inven­tor of 16 Unit­ed States Patents. As an indi­ca­tion of his high vis­i­bil­i­ty, he has giv­en over two hun­dred invit­ed and keynote lec­tures.

Call for Nominations for the 2011 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award

Each year the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia rec­og­nizes an out­stand­ing mem­ber of the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a $1000 cash prize.

We appre­ci­ate your help in sub­mit­ting nom­i­na­tions. The entire nom­i­na­tion pack­age, includ­ing a resume and rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters, should not be more than 10 pages. The dead­line for the receipt of nom­i­na­tions is April 15, 2010. Pri­or nom­i­na­tion pack­ages sent in 2007 or lat­er will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be con­sid­ered for the 2010 Award.

Nom­i­na­tion let­ter along with sup­port­ing mate­ri­als should be emailed to Michael Smith (Michael Smith).

Michael Smith
Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty

Catalysis Club of Philadelphia: Winners of the 2010–2011 Student Poster Competition

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia held the 2010–2011 Stu­dent Poster Com­pe­ti­tion Octo­ber 21st, 2010 with 28 stu­dent entries, and one post-doc­tor­al pre­sen­ter. The four run­ners-up includ­ed, Kevin Doura (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty) with “Cat­a­lyst by Design: Tun­ing the Selec­tive Oxi­da­tion of CH3OH to Dimethoxymethane over Sup­port­ed V2O5 – WO3/TiO2/SiO2 with TiO2 Nano­li­gands”; Gho­lam­reza Ros­tamikia (Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty Park) with “First Prin­ci­ples Design of Elec­tro­cat­a­lysts for Direct Boro­hy­dride Oxi­da­tion”; Andrew Fer­ens (Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty) with “Oxida­tive Dehy­dro­gena­tion of Ethanol to Acetalde­hyde and Eth­yl Acetate by Graphite Nanofibers”; and Xin Li (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) with “Selec­tive Oxi­da­tion of Propane to Acrylic Acid over Sin­gle Phase M1 MoVTeN­bOx Cat­a­lysts”. Top hon­ors went to Kevin Bakhmut­sky from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, with his poster titled “The Influ­ence of Cobalt Load­ing on Oxi­da­tion of Sup­port­ed Cat­a­lysts for Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis”. Along with top hon­ors, Kevin also received an invi­ta­tion to present his research at the Catal­y­sis Club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium to be held in May 2011 at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty.

Christopher Jones, Ph.D. heads ACS Catalysis, new American Chemical Society Journal

BOSTON, Aug. 23, 2010 — The Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) Board of Direc­tors today announced the appoint­ment of Christo­pher W. Jones, Ph.D., as Edi­tor-in-Chief of ACS Catal­y­sis, the newest jour­nal in ACS’s suite of high­ly cit­ed, peer-reviewed jour­nals.

ACS Catal­y­sis will offi­cial­ly launch in Jan­u­ary 2011 ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lish­ing orig­i­nal research on and at the inter­faces of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis and bio­catal­y­sis. Appli­ca­tion cov­er­age of ACS Catal­y­sis will include life sci­ences, drug dis­cov­ery & devel­op­ment, house­hold prod­ucts, poly­mer dis­cov­ery & pro­duc­tion, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and ener­gy & fuels.

Dar­la Hen­der­son, Ph.D., Assis­tant Direc­tor of Edi­to­r­i­al Devel­op­ment in the ACS Jour­nals Pub­lish­ing Group expressed plea­sure with hav­ing Jones on board as Edi­tor-in Chief of ACS Catal­y­sis. “Dr. Jones’ vision for ACS Catal­y­sis encom­pass­es out­reach to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in a sig­nif­i­cant sense. Dr. Jones’ research expe­ri­ence across sev­er­al major research areas in the catal­y­sis field over­all, and col­lab­o­ra­tive work with­in the var­i­ous aspects of catal­y­sis pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage to his ser­vice as the Inau­gur­al Edi­tor-in-Chief of ACS Catal­y­sis.”

“As both a catal­y­sis sci­en­tist and as the Edi­tor-in-Chief of ACS Catal­y­sis, I am very excit­ed about the poten­tial of this new jour­nal,” Jones not­ed. “ACS Catal­y­sis will offer a new forum for rapid and effi­cient dis­sem­i­na­tion of nov­el exper­i­men­tal or the­o­ret­i­cal results in all areas of catal­y­sis. The com­bi­na­tion of breadth of top­i­cal cov­er­age in catal­y­sis, a fast and rig­or­ous review of man­u­scripts, and the con­ve­nience and effi­cien­cy of the ACS Pub­li­ca­tions web plat­form unique­ly posi­tion ACS Catal­y­sis for suc­cess.”

Jones is the Pro­fes­sor and J. Carl and Sheila Pirkle Fac­ul­ty Fel­low at the School of Chem­i­cal & Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing and Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry at the Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Atlanta, Geor­gia. His research inter­ests are works in the broad areas of mate­ri­als design and syn­the­sis, catal­y­sis and adsorp­tion. His research group’s work on the ratio­nal design of mol­e­c­u­lar­ly engi­neered mate­ri­als draws from a num­ber of dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines to enable the devel­op­ment of func­tion­al mate­ri­als with appli­ca­tions in areas such as catal­y­sis and sep­a­ra­tions.

Jones received his BSE in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, his MS in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and his PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing with a Minor in Chem­istry from the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. He is a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion, the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion, the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, and the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. He recent­ly was award­ed the 2010 Ipati­eff Prize from ACS, rec­og­niz­ing out­stand­ing chem­i­cal exper­i­men­tal work in the field of catal­y­sis or high pres­sure, car­ried out by an indi­vid­ual of any nation­al­i­ty who is not over 40 years of age.