Work­shop Chair: George W. Huber, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts-Amherst

Spon­sors:
Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion: Chem­i­cal, Bio­engi­neer­ing, Envi­ron­men­tal and Trans­port Sys­tems, John Regal­b­u­to
Depart­ment of Ener­gy: Office of the Bio­mass, Paul Grabows­ki
Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety-Green Chem­istry Insti­tute


A recent roadmap out­lines the vital impor­tance of cat­a­lysts for cel­lu­losic bio­fu­els. This roadmap is avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly at www​.ecs​.umass​.edu/​b​i​o​f​u​els and is the result of a 2 day work­shop spon­sored by the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion and Depart­ment of Ener­gy. This work­shop brought togeth­er more than 70 par­tic­i­pants from acadamia, indus­try and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to pro­vide a uni­fied doc­u­ment on how cel­lu­losic bio­fu­els can become a prac­ti­cal real­i­ty. The roadmap artic­u­lates the cen­tral role of chem­istry, chem­i­cal catal­y­sis, ther­mal pro­cess­ing, and engi­neer­ing in the con­ver­sion of lig­no­cel­lu­losic bio­mass into liq­uid trans­porta­tion fuels includ­ing green gaso­line, green diesel and green jet fuel.

Six thrust areas are dis­cussed in the roadmap includ­ing:

• Selec­tive Ther­mal Pro­cess­ing of Lig­no­cel­lu­losic Bio­mass
• Uti­liza­tion of Petro­le­um Refin­ing Tech­nolo­gies for Bio­fu­el Pro­duc­tion
• Aque­ous-phase Cat­alyt­ic Pro­cess­ing of Sug­ars and Bio-oils
• Cat­alyt­ic Con­ver­sion of Syn-gas
• Process Engi­neer­ing and Design
• Cross Cut­ting 21st Cen­tu­ry Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and Infra­struc­ture for a New Gen­er­a­tion of Bio­fu­el Research

This work­shop builds on the suc­cess of four pre­vi­ous NSF and DOE work­shops. The pre­vi­ous NSF work­shops include: “Catal­y­sis for Biore­new­ables Con­ver­sion (www​.egr​.msu​.edu/​a​p​p​s​/​n​s​f​w​o​r​k​s​hop)” and “Design of Cat­a­lyst Sys­tems for Biore­new­ables (www3​.cbe​.ias​tate​.edu/​n​s​f​b​i​o​r​en/)”. The pre­vi­ous DOE work­shops include: “Break­ing the Bio­log­i­cal Bar­ri­ers to Cel­lu­losic Ethanol” (genomic​s​gtl​.ener​gy​.gov/​b​i​o​f​u​e​l​s​/​b​2​b​w​o​r​k​s​h​o​p​.​s​h​tml) and “Ther­mo­chem­i­cal Con­ver­sion of Bio­mass” (www​.ther​mochem​.bio​mass​.gov​tools​.us/).

For cel­lu­losic bio­fu­els to real­ize their full poten­tial it is vital to over­come the chem­i­cal and engi­neer­ing bar­ri­ers. Recent advances in the­o­ret­i­cal chem­istry com­bined with new in-situ cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion meth­ods allow us to under­stand chem­istry at a fun­da­men­tal­ly new lev­el. Com­bin­ing fun­da­men­tal chem­i­cal under­stand­ing with new meth­ods to syn­the­size nanos­truc­tured cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als, the abil­i­ty to design and sim­u­late com­pli­cat­ed reac­tion net­works, and the abil­i­ty to per­form con­cep­tu­al design and opti­miza­tion prob­lems will allow us to engi­neer effi­cient and eco­nom­i­cal process­es for bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion.

Elec­tions for the 2008–2009 Club Offi­cers will be held on Thurs­day, April 24, 2008. The fol­low­ing can­di­dates were nom­i­nat­ed for office:

Chair-Elect: Joe Fedeyko and Michael Smith

Trea­sur­er: Steve Har­ris and Qi Sun

Direc­tors: Haim­ing Liu, Frank Herkes, Rod Reber and Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den

The Sec­re­tary, Pro­gram Chair and Arrange­ment Chair are appoint­ed by the Club Chair­man. Their short biogra­phies are list­ed below.

Joe Fedeyko

— Joe is cur­rent­ly a Staff Sci­en­tist at John­son Matthey Inc., Emis­sion Con­trols 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 7 years serv­ing as the Pro­gram Chair this past year.

Michael Smith

— Michael received his Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 2004, and since has held posi­tions as research sci­en­tist where he con­duct­ed research on syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of acti­vat­ed car­bons. Mike is cur­rent­ly a Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty. His research inter­ests focus on devel­op­ment of nanos­truc­tured mate­ri­als for catal­y­sis, adsorp­tion, and sep­a­ra­tion; mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion (elec­tron microscopy, dif­frac­tion, adsorp­tion); het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal kinet­ics. Pri­or to obtain­ing his PhD, Mike held a vari­ety of posi­tions in the DuPont’s tita­ni­um diox­ide pig­ment busi­ness, and he is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute for Chem­i­cal Engi­neers and the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 1999, and served as Direc­tor since 2005.

Steve Harris

— Steve received his BS in chem­istry from Muh­len­berg Col­lege in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Phys­i­cal Organ­ic Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester in 1979 con­cen­trat­ing on homo­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms. His career start­ed at ARCO Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny where his respon­si­bil­i­ties ranged from devel­op­ment of cat­alyt­ic process­es and new oxy­genat­ed prod­ucts to Propy­lene Oxide and Propy­lene Gly­cols Tech­ni­cal Ser­vice and Appli­ca­tions Super­vi­sor. Cur­rent­ly he devel­op­ing new process­es and plant opti­miza­tions for the Per­for­mance Chem­i­cals busi­ness group with­in Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny.

Qi Sun

— Qi Sun is a sci­en­tist researcher at Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, New­town Square, Penn­syl­va­nia, work­ing on research and devel­op­ment of process and cat­a­lyst. Pri­or to Lyon­dell, Qi Sun worked for Süd-Chemie Inc. for four years and was in charge of the research group of olefins cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment. Qi Sun received his Ph.D. degree on Sur­face Chem­istry and Catal­y­sis from Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty, Shang­hai and worked as a post-doc­tor­al researcher at Cal­tech and North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty before his indus­tri­al career. His research in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis includes sol­id acid, met­al oxide, sup­port­ed met­al and mem­brane catalysis/separation in the appli­ca­tion of iso­mer­iza­tion, desul­fu­r­iza­tion, metathe­sis, emis­sion con­trol (DeNOx), F-T syn­the­sis, methanol syn­the­sis, syn­gas, reform­ing, par­tial oxi­da­tion, selec­tive hydro­gena­tion et al. He is a mem­ber of Philadel­phia catal­y­sis Club.

Haiming Liu

— Haim­ing Liu is cur­rent­ly a Research Sci­en­tist at Arke­ma Inc. For the past five years he works on char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of organ­ic and inor­gan­ic mate­ri­als includ­ing poly­mers, small mol­e­cules, and cat­a­lysts, using pri­mar­i­ly Nuclear Mag­net­ic Res­o­nance Spec­troscopy and expand­ing new instru­men­ta­tion capa­bil­i­ty. He received his Ph. D. in chem­istry from State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Stony Brook, and worked as a post-doc at Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia on syn­the­sis, catal­y­sis, and gas sorption/separation appli­ca­tions of mol­e­c­u­lar sieves includ­ing zeo­lites and porous met­al-organ­ic frame­works. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for sev­en years, served as Arrange­ments Chair, and is the cur­rent Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor as well as com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive. He is also a mem­ber of North East Cor­ri­dor Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion, served as Poster Chair, and will co-chair NECZA 2007 meet­ing.

Frank E. Herkes

— EDUCATION: DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty, Chica­go, BS 1962; Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, PhD. Phys­i­cal Organ­ic Chem­istry, 1966; Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, Cam­bridge, MA. NSF Post­doc­tor­al with Prof. Paul Bartlett, 1966–1968.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Has 35 years of catal­y­sis and process devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence in the man­u­fac­ture, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of amines, alco­hols and esters while employed in DuPont Spe­cial­ty prod­ucts. Het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lyst back­ground includes cat­a­lyst syn­the­sis on car­bon and met­al oxide sup­ports, dehy­dro­gena­tions, sil­i­ca zeo­lites, alco­hol ami­na­tion and reduc­tive ami­na­tion and alky­la­tion, azo reduc­tions, ring, car­bonyl, olefinic and ester reduc­tions He is the author of 32 US patents and 19 pub­li­ca­tions, and has edit­ed 1 book.

Chair­man of the 17th Con­fer­ence on Organ­ic Catal­y­sis in 1998 and spent the 6 years on the Exec­u­tive Board of the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (ORCS). Mem­ber of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Soci­ety hav­ing served as trea­sur­er on two occa­sions and the arrange­ments chair­man. On May 22, 2003 was pre­sent­ed The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia award for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the field of catal­y­sis. Received the Rus­sell E. Maltz award in 2006 from the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety for out­stand­ing ser­vice to the soci­ety.

Rod Reber

— Rod, since 2006, has been Direc­tor of Sales and Mar­ket­ing for Applied Cat­a­lysts, a man­u­fac­tur­er of cat­a­lysts for sta­tion­ary emis­sions and oth­er spe­cial­ty appli­ca­tions.

Pre­vi­ous­ly he has held posi­tions as Sales Exec­u­tive with Tyco Health Care, Mallinckrodt’s API and Drug Chem­i­cal unit, and as Sales Man­ag­er for Degus­sa Corporation’s cat­a­lyst busi­ness. Rod is a grad­u­ate of Muh­len­berg Col­lege, Chem­istry 1976 and of Rut­gers, The State Uni­ver­si­ty of New Jer­sey, Mas­ters of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, 1992. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 1990.

Elizabeth Ross-Medgaarden

— Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den is a Research Sci­en­tist with Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries work­ing in the Process R&D depart­ment. She joined Lyon­dell­Basell direct­ly after receiv­ing her Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty under the direc­tion of Prof. Israel Wachs in Sep­tem­ber 2007 and Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lafayette Col­lege in 2002.

Elizabeth’s het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis back­ground includes cat­a­lyst syn­the­sis on nano-met­al oxide sup­ports and devel­op­ment of new active site mod­els for acid cat­a­lysts, by apply­ing reac­tion and opti­cal spec­troscopy tech­niques. Eliz­a­beth has been a mem­ber of ACS and AIChE since 2000 and a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for the past 5 years.