Author Archives: Edrick Morales

Prof. Nicholas Delgass winner of the 2006 Award for Excellence in Catalysis

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor W. Nicholas Del­gass of Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty is the recip­i­ent of the Society’s 2006 Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing.

Pro­fes­sor Del­gass is being rec­og­nized for his numer­ous, sig­nif­i­cant, con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis sci­ence. Since receiv­ing his PhD from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty with Michel Boudart, Pro­fes­sor Del­gass’ long and illus­tri­ous career has been marked by ele­gant and cre­ative research in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and sur­face sci­ence. His research is dis­tin­guished by its con­sis­tent focus on fun­da­men­tal kinet­ics, mol­e­c­u­lar char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and care­ful atten­tion to exper­i­men­tal detail to pro­vide clear mech­a­nis­tic insights into com­plex cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. In so doing, he has pio­neered the appli­ca­tion to cat­alyt­ic sys­tems of many spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques, such as Möss­bauer, XPS, SIMS and sol­id state NMR, pro­vid­ing struc­tur­al under­stand­ing of both active sites and key organ­ic inter­me­di­ates. Pro­fes­sor Del­gass con­tin­ues to advance the catal­y­sis field in his cur­rent role as Direc­tor of Purdue’s new­ly formed Cen­ter for Catal­y­sis Design. In this role, Pro­fes­sor Del­gass is lead­ing a mul­ti-sci­en­tist effort to uti­lize high through­put exper­i­men­ta­tion along with for­ward pre­dic­tive fun­da­men­tal mod­els to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sug­gest new cat­a­lyst struc­tures for exper­i­men­tal design. In addi­tion to his many research accom­plish­ments, Pro­fes­sor Del­gass is rec­og­nized as a pre­mier teacher, men­tor, and col­lab­o­ra­tor whose enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to inspire his many stu­dents, asso­ciates and col­leagues in the field.

Pro­fes­sor Del­gass will be hon­ored with a plaque and a cash award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny on May 24, 2006 at a din­ner meet­ing at the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York at the Mar­riott Hotel, Som­er­set, NJ. The award lec­ture will be giv­en there­after.

Recipients of the Award for Excellence in Catalysis

  • 1982 J.A. Rabo (Union Car­bide)
  • 1983 K. Kli­er (Lehigh)
  • 1984 W. Kaed­ing, et al (Mobil)
  • 1985 A. Van­nice (U. of Penn­syl­va­nia)
  • 1986 J. Lunsford (Texas A&M)
  • 1987 F.J. Karol, et al (Union Car­bide)
  • 1988 S.J. Tauster (Engel­hard)
  • 1989 Bruce C. Gates (Delaware)
  • 1990 W. Kei­th Hall (Pitts­burgh)
  • 1991 N.Y. Chen (Mobil)
  • 1992 H.S. Gand­hi (Ford)
  • 1993 Gary L. Haller (Yale)
  • 1994 James A. Dumesic (Wis­con­sin)
  • 1995 Gary McVick­er (Exxon)
  • 1996 Israel Wachs (Lehigh)
  • 1997 John Newsam (Mol­e­c­u­lar Sim­u­la­tions)
  • 1998 Ter­ry Bak­er (North­east­ern)
  • 1999 Shun Fung (Exxon)
  • 2000 Hen­ry C. Foley (Delaware)
  • 2001 J.F. Brazdil, et al (BP Chem­i­cal)
  • 2002 Amir H. Hov­ey­da (Boston Col­lege)
  • 2003 Stu Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)
  • 2004 Ralph Dal­la Bet­ta (Cat­alyt­i­ca)
  • 2005 Fabio Ribeiro (Pur­due)
  • 2006 W. Nicholas Del­gass (Pur­due)

Scope of the Technical Program for the 20th NAM

The 20th NAM orga­ni­za­tion announces scope of their tech­ni­cal pro­gram. There will be at least three ple­nary lec­tures, keynote pre­sen­ta­tions in all ses­sions, six par­al­lel oral ses­sions and poster ses­sions. Abstract sub­mis­sion begins on August 21, 2006 through 20NAM​.org. Details will be for­com­ing on their web site. Papers deal­ing with orig­i­nal exper­i­men­tal or the­o­ret­i­cal catal­y­sis research in the fol­low­ing, non-lim­it­ing, list of top­ics is encour­aged:

  • High through­put catal­y­sis
    • reac­tors, mate­r­i­al syn­the­sis, exper­i­men­tal design, data min­ing and analy­sis
  • Nov­el char­ac­ter­i­za­tion tech­niques
    • spec­troscopy, sur­face sci­ence, iso­tope switch­ing, microscopy, tomog­ra­phy
  • New cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and sup­ports
    • nan­otech­nol­o­gy, meso­porous mate­ri­als, zeo­lites, inor­gan­ic sup­ports
  • Cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy for pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment
    • emis­sion con­trol, use of alter­nate feed­stocks, pho­to­catal­y­sis, elec­tro­catal­y­sis, hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion from non-car­bon sources
  • Homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis
    • organometallics, poly­mer­iza­tion, bio­mimet­ics, ion­ic liq­uids and oth­er nov­el reac­tion media, chi­ral syn­the­sis
  • Cat­a­lyst deac­ti­va­tion, regen­er­a­tion and dis­po­si­tion
    • mech­a­nisms, chem­istry and process­es, met­al recov­ery, dis­pos­al of used cat­a­lysts
  • Syn­gas con­ver­sion
    • GTL, GTO, CTL, BTL
  • Hydropro­cess­ing
    • HDS, HDN, aro­mat­ic hydro­gena­tion
  • Heavy feed con­ver­sion
    • FCC, hydro­c­rack­ing, lubes, coal, shale oil
  • Catal­y­sis for chem­i­cals and spe­cial­ty prod­ucts
    • olefin pro­duc­tion, poly­mers, oxy­genates, chi­ral syn­the­sis
  • Hydro­gen and syn­gas gen­er­a­tion from hydro­car­bons
    • steam and autother­mal reform­ing, par­tial oxi­da­tion
  • Acid-base catal­y­sis
    • nov­el reac­tions and appli­ca­tions
  • Fuel cells
    • mate­ri­als, oper­a­tion, and mech­a­nisms, feed pre­treat­ment tech­nolo­gies
  • Nov­el reac­tors
    • mem­brane, peri­od­ic oper­a­tion, reverse flow, radi­al, micro reac­tors

21st Conference on the Catalysis of Organic Reactions

Announce­ment

The 21st Con­fer­ence on the Catal­y­sis of Organ­ic Reac­tions will be held April 2–6, 2006 in Orlan­do, Flori­da. The meet­ing will fea­ture oral and poster pre­sen­ta­tions involv­ing the appli­ca­tion of homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts in the syn­the­sis of organ­ic com­pounds. Paul N. Rylan­der Awards will be pre­sent­ed to Prof. Jean-Marie Bas­set, CNRS, and Prof. Gadi Rothen­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam. The Mur­ray Raney Award will be pre­sent­ed to Prof. Isamu Yamauchi, Uni­ver­si­ty of Osa­ka. The dead­line for pre-reg­is­tra­tion is Feb­ru­ary 28, 2006. Online reg­is­tra­tion will be avail­able at ORCS​.org. Con­tact Stephen R. Schmidt, W.R. Grace & Co., or 410–531-4040 for fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

The Catalysis Club of Philadelphia 2006 Spring Symposium: Call for Abstracts

First Call for Abstracts

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia invites you to sub­mit abstracts of papers for oral pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2006 Spring Sym­po­sium. As the head­ing of the abstract please list the title, author(s) (under­line the speak­er) and affil­i­a­tion. The length of the abstract should not exceed one page, sin­gle-spaced. In the abstract, also include con­tact infor­ma­tion for the speak­er. Thir­ty min­utes will be allot­ted for each oral pre­sen­ta­tion, includ­ing the dis­cus­sion peri­od.

The dead­line for receipt of abstracts is March 13, 2006. You will be noti­fied of accep­tance for the Sym­po­sium by March 28, 2006.

Please send your abstracts to Roger Grey.

Winners of the 2006 Poster Competition

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s Annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test was held on Jan­u­ary 19, with 28 stu­dent entries and two post-doc­tor­al pre­sen­ters. Top hon­ors went to Ed Lee from Lehigh, with his poster “Con­trol­ling the Mol­e­c­u­lar Struc­ture and Reac­tiv­i­ty of Sup­port­ed Met­al Oxide Cat­alyt­ic Active Sites”. Four run­ners-up include Rohit Vijay (UD) with “Effi­cient Co Con­tain­ing NOx Stor­age and Reduc­tion Cat­a­lysts: Dis­cov­ery & Under­stand­ing Using High Through­put Exper­i­men­ta­tion”; Eliz­a­beth Ross (Lehigh) with ‘Tun­ing the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Elec­tron­ic Struc­tures of Cat­alyt­ic Active Sites with Oxide Sup­port Nano­li­gands”; Jeff Rimer (UD) with “Self-Assem­bly and Role of Sil­i­ca Nanopar­ti­cles in the Syn­the­sis of Micro­p­orous Sil­i­cates”; and Michael Gross (Penn) with “Devel­op­ment of Sol­id-Oxide Elec­trodes with Enhanced Ther­mal Sta­bil­i­ty”. Ed Lee will be pre­sent­ing a talk on his work at the Catal­y­sis Club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium, May 18, 2006.

2006 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award

Call for Nom­i­na­tions. Each year the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia rec­og­nizes an out­stand­ing mem­ber of the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. This award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of the con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. Such an advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship.

Those wish­ing to sub­mit a nom­i­na­tion should send a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion along with any oth­er per­ti­nent mate­ri­als. The entire nom­i­na­tion pack­age, includ­ing a resume and sup­port let­ters, should not be more than 10 pages. The dead­line for the receipt of nom­i­na­tions is April 14, 2006. All mate­ri­als or ques­tions should be direct­ed to:

Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Phone: (302) 831‑0642
Email: jgchen@​udel.​edu

Previous Winners

  • 1968 Adal­bert Farkas
  • 1969 Charles J. Plank
  • 1970 Paul H. Emmett
  • 1971 G. Alex Mills
  • 1972 Alfred E. Hirschler­li
  • 1973 Paul B. Weisz
  • 1974 Roland C. Hans­ford
  • 1975 Paul Venu­to
  • 1976 Heinz Heine­mann
  • 1977 G.C.A. Schuit
  • 1978 George W. Par­shall
  • 1979 Alvin B. Stiles
  • 1980 Abra­ham Schnei­der
  • 1981 James F. Roth
  • 1982 Robert Eis­chens
  • 1983 Edward Rosin­s­ki
  • 1984 James R. Katzer
  • 1985 N.Y. Chen
  • 1986 Bruce C. Gates
  • 1987 James E. Lyons
  • 1988 George Koko­tai­lo
  • 1989 Mau­rice Mitchell, Jr.
  • 1990 Wern­er O. Haag
  • 1991 John A. Sofranko
  • 1992 Fran Waller
  • 1993 George Kerr
  • 1994 Theodore A. Koch
  • 1995 John N. Armor
  • 1996 Mae Rubin
  • 1997 Leo E. Manz­er
  • 1998 Ray Gorte
  • 1999 Anne M. Gaffney
  • 2000 Hen­ry C. Foley
  • 2001 Mark Barteau
  • 2002 Steven D. Ittel
  • 2003 Frank E. Herkes
  • 2004 Jing­guang Chen
  • 2005 Israel Wachs