John N. Armor
Glob​al​Catal​y​sis​.com
Ore­field, PA, USA

Abstract — Ener­gy is one of the biggest busi­ness­es in the world, and catal­y­sis plays a big part in mak­ing this hap­pen. For 2010, the pro­ject­ed mar­ket for cat­a­lysts for ener­gy and envi­ron­men­tal seg­ments exceed­ed $16. bil­lion (Bharat Book Bureau, June 2010). This pre­sen­ta­tion will describe the impor­tance of under­stand­ing how cur­rent and future ener­gy needs and usage fit inti­mate­ly into catal­y­sis and chem­istry. Ener­gy needs and con­sump­tion impact economies world­wide, glob­al envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, and also the chem­i­cal indus­try. Catal­y­sis plays a piv­otal role in cre­at­ing new, more effi­cient routes to chem­i­cals and adding flex­i­bil­i­ty to our spec­trum of ener­gy sources, ener­gy car­ri­ers, and ener­gy conversion/production, while offer­ing a green­er more sus­tain­able solu­tion to future ener­gy demands. Thus, catal­y­sis is fun­da­men­tal to gen­er­at­ing cur­rent and future ener­gy solu­tions, and new ener­gy effi­cient sys­tems. Catal­y­sis has and will con­tin­ue to play a key role in the gen­er­a­tion of envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, sus­tain­able, and clean­er sources of ener­gy. The pre­sen­ta­tion will look anew at glob­al ener­gy sup­plies and focus on the com­po­nents and the increas­ing role of nat­ur­al gas (rel­a­tive to petro­le­um and coal), renew­ables, gas purifi­ca­tion, and how all this pro­vides mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties for catal­y­sis, espe­cial­ly with regard to envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. What is impres­sive is the past and pro­ject­ed growth of the world’s demand for ener­gy. Over the last 30 years, all of the major fuel options have shown mod­est growth, but these growth rates are pro­ject­ed to increase sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the next 20 years. World ener­gy demand is expect to expand by almost 45% between 2010 and 2030. It is clear that this demand is dri­ven not only by sus­tained growth in the US and Europe, but by rapid growth in Chi­na, India, and oth­er parts of Asia. The key is that demand will remain tight and very sus­cep­ti­ble to unpre­dictable events which can cre­ate hav­oc in the com­modi­ties mar­kets. When cou­pled with increas­ing pop­u­la­tions and people’s nat­ur­al quest to improve lifestyles, the price of oil (and ener­gy) is pro­ject­ed to only go high­er and high­er. The demands on ener­gy sup­ply will con­tin­ue to push nations to retrieve dirt­i­er sources of oil (oil shale and tar sands) and impure nat­ur­al gas. Those mar­ket forces and envi­ron­men­tal pres­sures, through tougher emis­sions con­trols and purifi­ca­tion stan­dards, will con­tin­ue to dri­ve con­tin­u­ing growth in cat­a­lysts as well as purifi­ca­tion meth­ods and mate­ri­als.
 
Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — John N. Armor, PhD, has oper­at­ed his own inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis con­sult­ing com­pa­ny, Glob​al​Catal​y​sis​.com L.L.C., since retir­ing from Air Prod­ucts, Inc in 2004 (after 19 years). Before serv­ing as the leader of the Catal­y­sis Research Cen­ter at Air Prod­ucts, he was a group leader at Allied Chem­i­cal (11 years), and an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty (4 years). He is a past Pres­i­dent of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (2001 2009) and active­ly involved in oth­er pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions, served as an edi­tor of Applied Catal­y­sis and CATTECH, and also has served on sev­er­al edi­to­r­i­al boards. He has pub­lished over 125 arti­cles in catal­y­sis and been a co inven­tor on over 50 US patents, and he has been inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized by sev­er­al pres­ti­gious awards (includ­ing the Houdry and Mur­phree Awards and the Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club).

Deng-Yang Jan
UOP-LLC-A Hon­ey­well Com­pa­ny
© 2011 UOP LLC, All Rights Reserved
 
Abstract — UZM-5 (UFI frame­work type) has 2-dimen­sion­al, chan­nel sys­tem con­nect­ing alpha cages through 8-MR pores with no con­nec­tiv­i­ty along the [001] axis. The active sites with­in the micro­p­orous struc­ture are not read­i­ly acces­si­ble to aro­mat­ic mol­e­cules. How­ev­er, UZM-5 (UFI) based cat­a­lysts is shown to be effec­tive in the alky­la­tion of ben­zene with light olefin under the liq­uid phase test con­di­tion. The good cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance sug­gests that there are abun­dant active sites exter­nal to the micro­p­orous struc­ture of UZM-5 and is con­sis­tent with struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion using DIF­Fax and HR-TEM. In con­trast the dis­pro­por­tion­a­tion and trans-alky­la­tion reac­tion of alkyl­ben­zene over zeo­lite beta (BEA) is car­ried out by acid sites in zeo­lite micro­p­ores and is sen­si­tive to acid­i­ty irre­spec­tive of the vary­ing mor­pholo­gies achieved by var­i­ous syn­the­sis approach­es. As shown by the EB dis­pro­por­tion­a­tion reac­tion in vapor phase and acid­i­ty mea­sure­ment by FTIR, the max­i­mal activ­i­ty coin­cides with max­i­mal acid­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, the activ­i­ty of the cat­a­lyst in liq­uid phase trans-alky­la­tion of di-iso­propy­l­ben­zene with ben­zene is shown to require both frame­work and non-frame­work alu­minum to achieve max­i­mal reac­tiv­i­ty.

 
Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Deng-Yang Jan has been work­ing in cat­a­lyst and prod­uct devel­op­ment at UOP-Hon­ey­well since 1986. He received his Ph. D. in Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry from The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1985.

Kevin Bakhmut­sky¹, Noah Wieder¹, Thomas Bal­das­sare², Michael A. Smith² and Ray­mond J. Gorte^1
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.

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.

2010 Spring Symposium

 
Mark A. Sny­der
P.C. Rossin Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty
Beth­le­hem, PA 18015

Abstract — Despite the promise for deriv­ing liq­uid hydro­car­bon fuels and high-val­ue chem­i­cals from renew­able cel­lu­losic feed­stocks, var­i­ous tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges have sti­fled the rapid com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the inte­grat­ed biore­fin­ery. The effi­cient and selec­tive down­stream pro­cess­ing of cel­lu­lose deriv­a­tives (e.g., hex­ose, fruc­tose, glu­cose, etc.) exists as a for­mi­da­ble pro­cess­ing bot­tle­neck. Owing to prop­er­ties such as breadth of oper­at­ing con­di­tions, des­ignable chem­i­cal selec­tiv­i­ty, and recy­cla­bil­i­ty, het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic routes serve as an attrac­tive means, in lieu of bio­log­i­cal, ther­mo­chem­i­cal, and homo­ge­neous ones, for effi­cient hydrother­mal pro­cess­ing of sug­ary cel­lu­lose deriv­a­tives. Yet, hydrother­mal insta­bil­i­ty of cur­rent cat­alyt­ic sup­ports opens excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for the devel­op­ment of next-gen­er­a­tion cat­a­lysts capa­ble of meet­ing selec­tiv­i­ty, effi­cien­cy, and sta­bil­i­ty needs of the future biore­fin­ery.

This talk will high­light efforts to real­ize hydrother­mal­ly sta­ble inor­gan­ic mate­ri­als bear­ing mul­ti­scale, three-dimen­sion­al­ly ordered pore topol­o­gy and tun­able sur­face func­tion­al­i­ty. Specif­i­cal­ly, it will focus on a hier­ar­chi­cal nan­otem­plat­ing approach in which pre-formed inor­gan­ic nanopar­ti­cles are assem­bled into ordered col­loidal crys­tal struc­tures and employed as hard, sac­ri­fi­cial tem­plates for both direct and indi­rect repli­ca for­ma­tion of var­i­ous hydrother­mal­ly sta­ble porous mate­ri­als (e.g., car­bon, tita­nia, zeo­lite). The work is pred­i­cat­ed upon the hypoth­e­sis that hard inor­gan­ic tem­plates help resist pore col­lapse dur­ing struc­tur­al coars­en­ing or con­fined growth of inor­gan­ic repli­ca mate­ri­als, and that decou­pling tem­plate for­ma­tion and repli­ca­tion allows for pre­cise and ver­sa­tile engi­neer­ing of the tem­plate, and thus the repli­ca pore topol­o­gy.

This talk will focus on var­i­ous stages of hier­ar­chi­cal mate­ri­als assem­bly, begin­ning with tech­niques for con­trolled syn­the­sis of pri­ma­ry inor­gan­ic nanopar­ti­cle build­ing units with nanome­ter res­o­lu­tion, and encom­pass­ing descrip­tions of their assem­bly into ordered porous struc­tures, tem­plat­ing of high­er-order porous mate­ri­als, and real­iza­tion of mul­ti­scale (e.g., micro-/me­so­porous) porous sub­strates. Exam­ples of mate­ri­als that will be dis­cussed include mono- and mul­ti-lay­er col­loidal crys­tal films, three-dimen­sion­al­ly ordered meso­porous (3DOm) car­bon and tita­nia repli­ca par­ti­cles and thin films, size-tun­able, uni­form­ly shaped zeolitic (i.e., sil­i­calilte-1) nanocrys­tals, and 3DOm-imprint­ed sin­gle crys­tal zeo­lite par­ti­cles. The result­ing tun­able porous mate­ri­als hold excit­ing impli­ca­tions for appli­ca­tions rang­ing from catal­y­sis to mol­e­c­u­lar sep­a­ra­tions, and simul­ta­ne­ous reac­tion-sep­a­ra­tions tech­nolo­gies.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Mark A. Sny­der obtained his B.S in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing with high­est hon­ors from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty in 2000, and his Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 2006. His doc­tor­al research on mul­ti­scale mod­el­ing of mol­e­c­u­lar trans­port in poly­crys­talline zeo­lite mem­branes was rec­og­nized with an Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers (AIChE) Grad­u­ate Research Award in 2005. Dur­ing his doc­tor­al work, he was also award­ed the T.W. Fras­er and Shirley Rus­sell Teach­ing Fel­low­ship (2004), the Robert L. Pig­ford Teach­ing Assis­tant Award (2003), and the Robert L. Pig­ford Grad­u­ate Fel­low­ship (2000). Sny­der car­ried out post-doc­tor­al research in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta from 2006–2008, inves­ti­gat­ing the benign syn­the­sis of met­al oxide nanopar­ti­cles and their assem­bly into mono- to mul­ti-lay­er porous thin films, perms­e­lec­tive encap­su­la­tion of liv­ing cells towards nov­el ther­a­peu­tics, and for­ma­tion of repli­ca porous struc­tures. Sny­der joined Lehigh University’s Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in August 2008 as an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, and was award­ed a P.C. Rossin Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor­ship in June 2009, a posi­tion that he will hold through 2011. At Lehigh, Snyder’s Porous and Func­tion­al­ized Nano­ma­te­ri­als Lab focus­es on the ratio­nal design and engi­neer­ing of func­tion­al­ized inor­gan­ic nanopar­ti­cles and porous mate­ri­als pri­mar­i­ly for catal­y­sis, mem­brane-based sep­a­ra­tions, and inte­grat­ed reac­tion-sep­a­ra­tion tech­nolo­gies span­ning appli­ca­tions in bio­fu­els, renew­able chem­i­cals, dye-sen­si­tized solar cells, and car­bon cap­ture.

2010 Spring Symposium

 
Dr. William F. Schnei­der
Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing
Con­cur­rent Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry
Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame

Abstract — Het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis enabled a rev­o­lu­tion in the 20th cen­tu­ry in terms of mankind’s abil­i­ty to turn moth­er nature’s mate­ri­als into use­ful prod­ucts for soci­ety. In most cas­es, these appli­ca­tions have pre­ced­ed rather than fol­lowed detailed under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and mech­a­nisms. In order to meet the increas­ing demands of ener­gy sus­tain­abil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, catal­y­sis sci­ence and appli­ca­tion in the 21st cen­tu­ry has to be dri­ven by basic insights into how mate­ri­als func­tion and how they can be improved. The advent of first-prin­ci­ples sim­u­la­tions based on den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry (DFT), which are able to reli­ably sim­u­late chem­i­cal struc­tures and reac­tions at the mol­e­c­u­lar scale, has been instru­men­tal in the recent renais­sance in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis research. In this talk, I will illus­trate the capa­bil­i­ties and chal­lenges of apply­ing these sim­u­la­tion tools in the con­text of the cat­alyt­ic chem­istry of nitro­gen oxides (NOx). NOx is an unwant­ed by-prod­uct of com­bus­tion and is par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to remove from lean com­bus­tion sources, such as diesel engines. NOx also has rather com­plex chem­istry that presents spe­cial chal­lenges to sim­u­la­tion. I will describe some of our suc­cess­es in under­stand­ing NOx chem­istry from first-prin­ci­ples, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on recent work to cap­ture the essen­tial fea­tures of the beguil­ing sim­ple cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion of NO to NO₂ in mol­e­c­u­lar mod­els, to rec­on­cile these mod­els with exper­i­men­tal results, and to use these insights to guide the selec­tion of new and improved cat­a­lysts.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Bill Schneider’s exper­tise is in chem­i­cal appli­ca­tions of den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry (DFT) sim­u­la­tions. He began his pro­fes­sion­al career in the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry work­ing on a vari­ety of prob­lems relat­ed to the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of auto­mo­bile emis­sions. There he devel­oped an inter­est in the cat­alyt­ic chem­istry of NOx for diesel emis­sions con­trol, and he has pub­lished exten­sive­ly on the chem­istry and mech­a­nisms of NOx decom­po­si­tion, selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion, trap­ping, and oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis. In 2004 he joined the Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame as a tenured Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor. At Notre Dame he has con­tin­ued his research into the the­o­ry and mol­e­c­u­lar sim­u­la­tion of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on reac­tion envi­ron­ment effects on cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and their impli­ca­tions for mech­a­nism and reac­tiv­i­ty. He has co-authored more than 90 papers and book chap­ters.

2010 Spring Symposium

 
Mark Stew­art
Research Sci­en­tist
Hydro­car­bons & Ener­gy and Alter­na­tive Feed­stocks
The Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny

Abstract — Tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and mar­ket forces are con­verg­ing to por­tend the unthink­able: viable options for olefin pro­duc­tion with­out a steam crack­er. The Alter­na­tive Feed­stock Pro­gram at Dow Chem­i­cal is imple­ment­ing routes to olefin deriv­a­tives that would have been unthink­able a decade ago. This talk will describe these efforts and, in par­tic­u­lar, high­light the emer­gence of bio-based poly­eth­yl­ene made by cat­alyt­ic dehy­dra­tion of ethanol to form eth­yl­ene. Next gen­er­a­tion bioethanol options are described. The extinc­tion of steam crack­ers is not immi­nent, but new tech­nolo­gies are find­ing their place. New alco­hol pro­duc­tion brings both vibran­cy and uncer­tain­ty to olefin pro­duc­tion.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Mark began his career with Dow in 1998 work­ing in the Dow’s Cen­tral Research lab­o­ra­to­ries in Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing on a vari­ety of pro­grams rang­ing from tra­di­tion­al semi-batch poly­ol reac­tors to mod­el­ing polyurethane reac­tions on straw in the pro­duc­tion of wheat par­ti­cle­board. In 2002 he moved to Hydro­car­bons Research for the sup­port of Styrene Plants, dur­ing which time he worked on sev­er­al projects receiv­ing Tech Cen­ter Awards val­ued in total over $60MM and inte­grat­ed the tech­ni­cal reac­tor mod­els into the com­mer­cial cost mod­els to opti­mize over­all pro­duc­tion. In 2006 Mark tran­si­tioned to olefins research where he is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the intro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies into tra­di­tion­al steam crack­ers and the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive feed­stocks for olefins pro­duc­tion. Dur­ing this time he worked close­ly in Dow’s effort in Brazil for the con­ver­sion of ethanol to poly­eth­yl­ene.

Mark earned his bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton in 1997, his Master’s in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice from MIT in 1998, and his Master’s in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in 2008.