2012 Spring Symposium

 
David W. John­son
Lucite Inter­na­tion­al UK Ltd

Abstract — A brief out­line of Lucite International’s new “Alpha” methyl methacry­late tech­nol­o­gy is described includ­ing process scale up and the first exploita­tion in Sin­ga­pore in late 2008. The tech­nol­o­gy was devel­oped from 0.5g/h lab scale to 500g/h pilot and thence direct­ly to 12te/h com­mer­cial scale. The plant was com­mis­sioned from first intro­duc­tion of chem­i­cals to 100% rate with­in 3 weeks and cur­rent­ly oper­ates at over 16te/h with excep­tion­al reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Two cat­alyt­ic steps are key to the tech­nol­o­gy. In the first, car­bon monox­ide, eth­yl­ene and methanol are react­ed in solu­tion with a nov­el pal­la­di­um phos­phine cat­a­lyst which gives methyl pro­pi­onate in 99.9+% selec­tiv­i­ty in a con­tin­u­ous process at ppm lev­el pal­la­di­um con­cen­tra­tions at 100C and 10bar total pres­sure. The cat­a­lyst activ­i­ty and life is very sen­si­tive to oper­at­ing con­di­tions. After exten­sive process devel­op­ment, activ­i­ties of 15,000 moles/mole Pd/h and life of >1x107moles methyl propionate/mole Pd are rou­tine­ly achieved on the com­mer­cial plant.

The sec­ond stage cat­a­lyst, com­posed of caesium/zirconia/silica reacts methyl pro­pi­onate with formalde­hyde at 330C and 1–2barg to form methyl methacry­late (MMA) and water. The selec­tiv­i­ty is about 93% to MMA based on methyl pro­pi­onate and over 80% on formalde­hyde fed. The pre­sen­ta­tion describes some of the steps in devel­op­ment of the cat­a­lyst includ­ing com­par­isons with cat­a­lysts for sim­i­lar process dis­closed by com­peti­tors. A dis­cus­sion of the mech­a­nism of for­ma­tion of MMA and byprod­ucts is made in terms of sur­face reac­tions between reac­tants and prod­ucts. A 2-site mod­el is pro­posed involv­ing both strong­ly basic and hydrox­ylic, weak­ly acidic sites. Reac­tions catal­ysed in byprod­uct for­ma­tion include decar­boxy­la­tions, com­bined con­den­sa­tion-decar­boxy­la­tions, hydride trans­fers and acid catal­y­sis. Lucite has found that com­pet­i­tive cat­a­lysts have the wrong bal­ance of acid­i­ty and basic­i­ty and result gen­er­al­ly in high lev­els of hydride trans­fer and acid catal­y­sis prod­ucts.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy: The author has a BA (Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, Chem­istry) from Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty a PhD in radi­a­tion chem­istry and car­ried out post­doc­tor­al research in LEED/XPS/UPS before join­ing ICI Ltd in 1977. With­in ICI he worked ini­tial­ly on nitrate pro­mot­ed sil­ver eth­yl­ene oxide cat­a­lysts fol­lowed by 4 years in ICI’s New Sci­ence Group study­ing the struc­ture of nov­el zeo­lites syn­the­sised by ICI co-work­ers. Since 1990 he has worked in the area of MMA process design and led the explorato­ry research team which defined the Alpha process and cur­rent­ly leads Lucite’s (for­mer­ly ICI Acrylics) chem­istry team. His cur­rent inter­ests are process improve­ment for the Alpha tech­nol­o­gy and intro­duc­tion of biotech­nol­o­gy into MMA man­u­fac­ture.

2012 Spring Symposium

 
Alan M. All­geier
DuPont (for­mer­ly Amgen Inc.)

Abstract — In the devel­op­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, catal­y­sis plays a crit­i­cal role and its prac­ti­tion­ers must nim­bly assim­i­late knowl­edge of organ­ic chem­istry, sur­face reac­tions, reac­tion engi­neer­ing and prod­uct iso­la­tion. In this pre­sen­ta­tion we explore three themes in catal­y­sis for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try: 1) Enabling New Reac­tiv­i­ty, 2) Qual­i­ty… Above All Else and 3) Speed to Deci­sions… Speed to Mar­ket.

New Reac­tiv­i­ty: Asym­met­ric hydro­formy­la­tion of nor­bornene and uti­liza­tion of keto­lac­tols as alde­hyde sur­ro­gates in reduc­tive ami­na­tion are described as nov­el chemistries demon­strat­ed on clin­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing scale. In the lat­ter case, den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry pro­vides insight into the mech­a­nism of the reac­tion.
Qual­i­ty: The use of pre­cious met­al cat­a­lysts engen­ders chal­lenges of remov­ing poten­tial­ly tox­ic met­als to meet qual­i­ty spec­i­fi­ca­tions. The emerg­ing tech­nique of HPLC with ICP/MS detec­tion is a valu­able tool for under­stand­ing the diver­si­ty of resid­ual met­al com­plex­es and iden­ti­fy­ing process options to clear met­al impu­ri­ties. In one such devel­op­ment effort a unique dearom­a­ti­za­tion reac­tion was char­ac­ter­ized and its mech­a­nism elu­ci­dat­ed.

Speed: In con­duct­ing hydro­gena­tion catal­y­sis for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals cat­a­lyst deac­ti­va­tion is inevitably observed at some stage of devel­op­ment. In one case deac­ti­va­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly depen­dent upon gas to liq­uid mass trans­fer rates in batch reac­tors. A method for mea­sur­ing the vol­u­met­ric mass trans­fer coef­fi­cient (kLa) is described. Using this infor­ma­tion reduces risk asso­ci­at­ed with scale up from lab­o­ra­to­ry to man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Alan All­geier grew up in the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side of north­west Penn­syl­va­nia. He earned his Ph.D. in Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry in 1997 from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty under the direc­tion of Prof. Chad Mirkin. He com­plet­ed post-doc­tor­al stud­ies in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis at DuPont under Dr. Theodore Koch and con­tin­ued at DuPont work­ing on hydro­gena­tion process­es for nylon monomers and spe­cial­ty chem­i­cals, as well as, homo­ge­neous­ly cat­alyzed olefin hydro­cya­na­tion for spe­cial­ty chem­i­cal appli­ca­tions. In 2004 Dr. All­geier moved to Amgen to estab­lish a com­pe­ten­cy in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and pres­sure chem­istry in sup­port of drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment. In 2011 he returned to DuPont to lead a lab­o­ra­to­ry in the Sur­face and Par­ti­cle Sci­ence Com­pe­ten­cy. Through his career Dr. All­geier has been a leader in pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing Arrange­ments Chair, Pro­gram Chair, Trea­sur­er and Chair of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club, Board mem­ber of the 19th North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing, and Chair of the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and its 23rd Con­fer­ence. He is a con­tribut­ing author / inven­tor of six­teen jour­nal arti­cles and four­teen patents or patent appli­ca­tions and served as Guest Edi­tor for Top­ics in Catal­y­sis. His tech­ni­cal inter­ests include cat­alyt­ic reac­tions for hydro­gena­tion, car­bony­la­tion, and cou­pling, as well as, cat­a­lyst deac­ti­va­tion and reac­tor design.

2012 Spring Symposium

 
Michael J. Janik
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty

Abstract — Den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry (DFT) meth­ods are wide­ly used to eval­u­ate sur­face cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and to pre­dict the rel­a­tive per­for­mance of var­i­ous cat­a­lyst for­mu­la­tions or struc­tures. The use of mod­el sys­tems, such as the sin­gle-crys­tal sur­face, to exam­ine cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties is well-estab­lished, with the gaps between mod­el sys­tems and real­is­tic sup­port­ed cat­a­lysts rel­a­tive­ly under­stood. Trans­la­tion of DFT approach­es to the elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic envi­ron­ment requires addi­tion­al method­olog­i­cal choic­es due to addi­tion­al com­plex­i­ties offered by the elec­tri­fied cat­a­lyst-elec­trolyte inter­face. This talk will pro­vide an overview of these chal­lenges and the var­i­ous DFT approach­es used to mod­el elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. The use of DFT to deter­mine elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and guide the design of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als will be dis­cussed using exam­ples from our group’s research; boro­hy­dride oxi­da­tion, oxy­gen reduc­tion, and car­bon diox­ide reduc­tion.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Dr. Janik is an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at PSU, begin­ning his appoint­ment August, 2006. His research inter­ests are in the use of com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods to under­stand and design mate­ri­als for alter­na­tive ener­gy con­ver­sion sys­tems. Cur­rent activ­i­ties address a wide-range of ener­gy tech­nolo­gies includ­ing fuel cells and bat­ter­ies, hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion, desul­fu­r­iza­tion, and CO2 cap­ture. Research meth­ods empha­size atom­istic sim­u­la­tion using quan­tum chem­i­cal meth­ods and kinet­ic mod­el­ing. Janik is affil­i­at­ed with the PSU Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Engine Cen­ter, Bat­tery and Ener­gy Stor­age Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter and the PSU Insti­tutes of Ener­gy and the Envi­ron­ment. Janik is the direc­tor of a Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion sup­port­ed Research Expe­ri­ence for Under­grad­u­ates cite in “Chem­i­cal Ener­gy Stor­age and Con­ver­sion.” The Janik research group cur­rent­ly includes 8 grad­u­ate stu­dents and 11 under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. Dr. Janik received his B. S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Fol­low­ing three years as a Process Engi­neer for Proc­ter and Gam­ble, Janik com­plet­ed his doc­tor­al stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. Janik com­plet­ed his doc­tor­al the­sis in 2006 exam­in­ing acid catal­y­sis by poly­ox­omet­a­lates fol­lowed by post-doc­tor­al work study­ing methanol elec­troox­i­da­tion. He is the author of approx­i­mate­ly 50 peer reviewed papers.

2012 Spring Symposium

 
Ist­van Halasz
PQ Cor­po­ra­tion

Abstract — Zeo­lites and amor­phous sil­i­ca gels are wide­ly used in adsorp­tion and catal­y­sis. PQ com­mer­cial­izes sil­i­ca based mate­ri­als by tai­lor­ing them to spe­cif­ic cus­tomer needs world­wide. These mod­i­fi­ca­tions usu­al­ly require series of mate­r­i­al tests which most­ly car­ried out at the company’s R&D Cen­ter where I have been assigned to inves­ti­gate the poros­i­ty, acid­i­ty, sorp­tion capac­i­ty, activ­i­ty and oth­er tar­get­ed prop­er­ties of exper­i­men­tal and com­mer­cial prod­ucts. Some­times these exper­i­ments lead to unex­pect­ed, sur­pris­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry results which usu­al­ly gen­er­ate var­i­ous spec­u­la­tive expla­na­tions. In this pre­sen­ta­tion I’ll illus­trate through a few exam­ples how mol­e­c­u­lar mod­el­ing can help in resolv­ing con­flicts between ideas and empir­i­cal find­ings. I intend to show that the com­mon­ly avail­able com­put­er pow­er and mod­el­ing pro­grams have devel­oped so much dur­ing the past few years that even an exper­i­men­tal­ist with lim­it­ed resources and the­o­ret­i­cal back­ground can mim­ic var­i­ous empir­i­cal data which is the basis to under­stand­ing mate­r­i­al prop­er­ties at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el. It will be also shown how com­put­er chem­istry can lead to improved quan­tifi­ca­tion of oth­er­wise rou­tine­ly mea­sured mol­e­c­u­lar spec­tro­scop­ic data. The pre­sent­ed exam­ples will include mod­el cal­cu­la­tions based on force field relat­ed Monte Car­lo algo­rithm, time depen­dent den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry, and a com­bi­na­tion of quan­tum mechanical/molecular mechan­i­cal meth­ods. Sim­u­lat­ed exper­i­men­tal sorp­tion isotherms and FTUV spec­tra of two hydropho­bic zeo­lites will be pre­sent­ed to explain their unusu­al sorp­tion prop­er­ties and redox cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ties. More­over, we com­pare the mod­el and exper­i­men­tal FTIR and laser Raman spec­tra of some amor­phous sil­i­cates and present the first exper­i­men­tal proof that sil­i­ca gels obtained from aque­ous alka­line sil­i­cate solu­tions or tetra-eth­yl-orthosil­i­cate at acidic or basic con­di­tions can have dis­tinct mol­e­c­u­lar struc­tures which affect their final phys­i­cal prop­er­ties.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Ist­van obtained a physics and chem­istry teacher diplo­ma from the Lajos Kos­suth Uni­ver­si­ty, Hun­gary. Lat­er he was award­ed magna cum laude doc­tor­ate degree from the same uni­ver­si­ty and a high­er degree from the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, HAS. Fol­low­ing three years of teach­ing phys­i­cal chem­istry, he joined the Hun­gar­i­an Hydro­car­bon Insti­tute, where he devel­oped new, eco­nom­ic process­es for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, fine chem­i­cal and petro­chem­i­cal plants and stud­ied the fun­da­men­tals of acid-base catal­y­sis over met­al oxides. As a young sci­en­tist he won sev­er­al com­pet­i­tive awards and a research schol­ar­ship for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Vien­na, Aus­tria. After 12 years of indus­tri­al research, he moved to the Chem­i­cal Research Insti­tute of HAS where his major research top­ics includ­ed shape selec­tive catal­y­sis on zeo­lites and syn­the­sis of high tem­per­a­ture ceram­ic super­con­duc­tors. Ist­van also worked as post­doc­tor­al researcher at Wayne State Uni­ver­si­ty and Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, focus­ing main­ly on the cat­alyt­ic abate­ment of auto­mo­bile exhausts and indus­tri­al stack gas­es. He joined PQ near­ly 14 years ago. He has been mem­ber of sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions and cur­rent­ly serves as pres­i­dent of NECZA (North East Cor­ri­dor Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion). Ist­van has authored and co-authored more than 180 pub­li­ca­tions.

2012 Spring Symposium

 
Enrique Igle­sia
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley and Chem­i­cal Sci­ences Divi­sion
E.O. Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry

Abstract — The rate and selec­tiv­i­ty of reac­tions cat­alyzed by acids depend on the sta­bil­i­ty of ion-pairs at tran­si­tion states that medi­ate kinet­i­cal­ly-rel­e­vant steps. Rates and selec­tiv­i­ties for alka­nol dehy­dra­tion and homolo­ga­tion, alkene and cycloalkene iso­mer­iza­tion, and alkox­ide scis­sion and hydro­gen trans­fer on poly­ox­omet­a­late and zeolitic acids show that sen­si­tiv­i­ty to acid strength reflects dif­fer­ences in the amount and dif­fuse­ness of the charge in the rel­e­vant pre­cur­sors and the tran­si­tion states. The effects of sol­va­tion by con­fine­ment on rates and selec­tiv­i­ties depend, in turn, on their respec­tive dif­fer­ences in size. The known struc­tures of these acids allow rig­or­ous com­par­isons between exper­i­ment and the­o­ry, which con­firm the mech­a­nis­tic inter­pre­ta­tions of rate data and the rel­e­vance of depro­to­na­tion ener­gies as the­o­ret­i­cal prox­ies of acid strength. These stud­ies and insights sug­gest a rig­or­ous reac­tiv­i­ty-based rank­ing of acid strength that can be used to assess the strength of sol­id acids with uncer­tain or non-uni­form struc­tures.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Enrique Igle­sia is the Theodore Ver­meulen Chair in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley and a Fac­ul­ty Senior Sci­en­tist in the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. He received his B.S. from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and his Ph.D. degree from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty with Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart and joined the Berke­ley fac­ul­ty in 1993 after 12 years in research and lead­er­ship posi­tions at the Cor­po­rate Research Labs of Exxon. He has served as Edi­tor-in-Chief of Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis and is the Pres­i­dent of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Direc­tor of the Berke­ley Catal­y­sis Cen­ter. He has co-authored more than 300 arti­cles in the lead­ing jour­nals in chem­istry and chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing and is a co-inven­tor in 38 U.S. patents. He is a mem­ber of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing and a Fel­low of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. His research has been rec­og­nized with the Somor­jai and Olah Awards of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the Award for Excel­lence in Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion, the Alpha Chi Sig­ma and Wil­helm awards of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, the Emmett and Bur­well Awards of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Tan­abe Prize in Acid-Base Catal­y­sis, the Cana­di­an Chem­i­cal Soci­ety Cross Cana­da Lec­ture­ship, and the Fran­cois Gault Award of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. His research inter­ests include the syn­the­sis and struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of nov­el inor­gan­ic solids use­ful as cat­a­lysts in chem­i­cal reac­tions of crit­i­cal impor­tance in ener­gy con­ver­sion, sus­tain­able syn­the­sis of ener­gy car­ri­ers and petro­chem­i­cals, and pol­lu­tion pre­ven­tion and envi­ron­men­tal con­trol.

2012 Spring Symposium

 
Yadan Tang, Charles A. Roberts, Israel Wachs
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty

Abstract — Mea­sured trends in cat­alyt­ic reac­tiv­i­ty over vary­ing met­al cat­a­lysts have been used to facil­i­tate the opti­miza­tion of bimetal­lic catalysts.[1] An impor­tant exam­ple of such a trend is the Sachtler-Fahren­fort vol­cano curve, in which reac­tiv­i­ty of met­al sur­faces for formic acid decom­po­si­tion is plot­ted against the sta­bil­i­ty of inter­me­di­ates, i.e. the bulk heat of for­ma­tion of the for­mate on a spe­cif­ic met­al surface.[2] It is ques­tion­able, how­ev­er, to cor­re­late a bulk prop­er­ty with cat­alyt­ic reac­tiv­i­ty, a process that occurs exclu­sive­ly at the sur­face. The cur­rent study inves­ti­gates the cor­re­la­tion between formic acid decom­po­si­tion and reac­tiv­i­ty of bulk met­al cat­a­lysts (i.e. Fe, Ru, Pd, Pt, Au, Ag, Ni, Co, and Cu) using mod­ern tech­niques such as in situ dif­fuse reflectance infrared Fouri­er trans­form spec­troscopy (DRIFTS) and tem­per­a­ture pro­grammed sur­face reac­tion (TPSR) spec­troscopy. In situ DRIFTS mon­i­tors the for­mate struc­ture on the sur­face of bulk met­al cat­a­lysts dur­ing the adsorp­tion and decom­po­si­tion of formic acid. By uti­liz­ing a tem­per­a­ture ramp­ing pro­ce­dure, in situ DRIFTS also pro­vides insights into ther­mal sta­bil­i­ty of adsorbed for­mates. TPSR spec­troscopy detects the tem­per­a­ture at which the peak activ­i­ty for decom­po­si­tion of the adsorbed for­mates occurs, there­fore pro­vid­ing a mea­sure of the reac­tiv­i­ty of the met­al sur­face. In situ DRIFTS and TPSR spec­troscopy exper­i­ments agree with the pre­vi­ous report­ed find­ing that the decom­po­si­tion of HCOOH pro­ceeds via two steps: 1) for­ma­tion of sur­face adsorbed for­mate (HCOO-M) inter­me­di­ates; and 2) decom­po­si­tion of for­mate inter­me­di­ates into gas phase prod­ucts such as CO, CO2, H2 and H2O.[3] The for­mate struc­ture on var­i­ous met­al cat­a­lysts are iden­ti­fied and assigned based on a pre­vi­ous study on formic acid via high res­o­lu­tion elec­tron ener­gy loss spec­troscopy (HREELs).[3] The cur­rent study finds that the for­mate species on Fe, Ru, Pd, Pt and Au are bridged; on Co and Ni are mon­oden­tate; and on Cu and Ag are con­vert­ed from mon­oden­tate to bridged at high­er tem­per­a­ture in agree­ment with HREE­Ls work on both Cu(100) and Ag(110).[4] The TPSR decom­po­si­tion tem­per­a­tures, Tp, were plot­ted ver­sus the bulk heat of for­ma­tion of for­mates report­ed by Sachtler and Farenfort[2]. Rather than a vol­cano trend, the plot is observed to con­tain two dis­tinct lin­ear rela­tion­ships indi­cat­ing that trends in reac­tiv­i­ty of met­als should be eval­u­at­ed based on sur­face prop­er­ties rather than bulk.

[1] Jacob­sen, Claus J. H., Dahl, S., Clausen, Bjerne S., Bahn, S., Logadot­tir, A., and Nørskov, Jens K. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 8404 (2001).
[2] Sachtler, W.M.H., and Fahren­fort, J., in “Pro­ceed­ings, 2nd Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis, Paris, 1960,” p.831. Tech­nip, Paris, 1961.
[3] Colum­bia, M.R., Thiel, P.A. J. Eelec­tro­an­a­lyt­i­cal Chem. 369, 1–14 (1994).
[4] Sexton,B.A. Surf. Sci., 88, 319 (1979).

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Yadan Tang is a grad­u­ate stu­dent in Chem­istry at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, advised by Pro­fes­sor Israel Wachs. She received her B.S. in Mate­r­i­al Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at East Chi­na Univ. of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in 2006. She received her M.S. in Chem­istry Depart­ment at Lehigh Univ in 2010. Since joined in Wachs group in 2011, she has been involved in formic acid decom­po­si­tion on bulk met­al cat­a­lyst and sup­port­ed met­al oxides on zeo­lite.

2012 Spring Symposium

 
Tewodros Ase­fa
Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Chem­i­cal Biol­o­gy, and Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal and Bio­chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Rut­gers, The State Uni­ver­si­ty of New Jer­sey

Abstract — The devel­op­ment of nov­el nano­ma­te­ri­als with unique struc­tures enables fun­da­men­tal stud­ies at the nanoscale, which can lead to var­i­ous inter­est­ing appli­ca­tions. In this talk, efforts by my research group over the last few years on three dif­fer­ent, but relat­ed, areas will be dis­cussed. In the first part, I will describe how the ratio­nal assem­bly of mul­ti­func­tion­al nanos­truc­tured mate­ri­als com­posed of met­al oxides, car­bon nanofibers, metal­lic nanopar­ti­cles, organocat­a­lysts or organometal­lic com­plex­es leads to nov­el nanocat­a­lysts for effi­cient syn­er­gis­tic cat­alyt­ic reac­tions or for mul­ti-step in one-pot tan­dem reac­tions of var­i­ous organ­ic com­pounds. The effects of how two or mul­ti­ple cat­alyt­ic groups that are co-placed with­in nanoscale cav­i­ties do syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly cat­alyze reac­tions will be demon­strat­ed. Fur­ther­more, by plac­ing these cat­a­lysts in fixed bed reac­tors, con­tin­u­ous reac­tions to selec­tive prod­ucts has been demon­strat­ed.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Ted­dy Ase­fa was born in Ethiopia where he also com­plet­ed his B.Sc. degree in Chem­istry with dis­tinc­tion in 1992 from Addis Aba­ba Uni­ver­si­ty, Ethiopia. He came to the Unit­ed States as a Ful­bright Schol­ar in 1996 to do his grad­u­ate study. After a brief stay at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware, he joined the Insti­tute for Lasers, Pho­ton­ics and Bio­pho­ton­ics (ILPB) at the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Buf­fa­lo to com­plete his M.Sc. in Chem­istry in 1998 with Pro­fes­sor Paras N. Prasad. Ted­dy, then, went to Toron­to, Cana­da to com­plete his Ph.D. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to in 2002 with Pro­fes­sor Geof­frey A. Ozin. While at Toron­to, he has co-invent­ed new class­es of nanocom­pos­ite mate­ri­als called Peri­od­ic Meso­porous Organosil­i­cas (PMOs) that are cur­rent­ly draw­ing wide range of inter­est world-wide. He was then an invit­ed Miller Fel­low­ship nom­i­nee by Pro­fes­sor Pei­dong Yang at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley and a post-doc­tor­al fel­low at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty with Pro­fes­sor R. Bruce Lennox. Ted­dy then joined the fac­ul­ty at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty in the sum­mer of 2005 and served as an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry for four years before mov­ing to Rut­gers as an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor. He is cur­rent­ly a joint Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Chem­i­cal Biol­o­gy and the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal and Bio­chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty at New Brunswick. He is also a mem­ber of the Rut­gers Insti­tute for Mate­ri­als, Devices, and Nan­otech­nol­o­gy (IAMDN) and the Rut­gers Ener­gy Insti­tute (REI). In Decem­ber 2009, he helped putting togeth­er the new­ly formed Rut­gers Catal­y­sis Research Cen­ter (RCRC). His group at Rut­gers is involved in the devel­op­ment of syn­thet­ic meth­ods to a wide array of func­tion­al nano­ma­te­ri­als and the inves­ti­ga­tion of their poten­tial appli­ca­tions in catal­y­sis, tar­get­ed deliv­ery of drugs at spe­cif­ic cells, nanocy­to­tox­i­c­i­ty, solar-cells, and envi­ron­men­tal reme­di­a­tion. He is an NSF CAREER Awardee, holds NSF Cre­ativ­i­ty Award, and is a recent Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Amer­i­can Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fel­low (NSF-ACIF) for 2010, and also is a recip­i­ent of mul­ti­ple fed­er­al and local research grants and also serves as a pan­elist for sev­er­al fed­er­al and inter­na­tion­al agen­cies. He was recent­ly award­ed the Rut­gers Board of Trustees Fel­low­ships for Schol­ar­ly excel­lence, the high­est hon­or giv­en to young pro­fes­sors at Rut­gers.