2018 Swanson School Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Newsletter

ChemE NEWS Full C g n i ir m

“Over the past few years I had noted with interest that industries such as automotive, home appliance, and even aluminum cans were transforming their business models from traditional products to services, where goods are designed to be recovered and reused,” Dr. Beckman said. “By contrast, the paradigm of the chemical industry has, for 150 years, been short lifetime and single use. In fact, one study found that the United States only recycles nine percent of its plastic waste, well behind Europe (30 percent) and China (25 percent).1

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ach year more than eight million tons of plastics pollute the ocean, forming mammoth, socalled “garbage patches” via strong currents. Even with new collection methods, only 0.5 percent out of that volume is currently removed from the seas. One solution to this growing crisis is to prevent plastic from becoming waste to begin with – and researchers from the Swanson School of Engineering are one of five international teams awarded for their novel solutions to this problem.

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Cir l a ne At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in tion“Since simple plastics are composed of molecules that of F a n Davos, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and NineSigma r ive Wi e nners of Int can be manipulated to perform various functions, I wondered announced the winners of the Circular Materials Challenge.

The winners will each receive a $200,000 share of the $1 million prize.

Together with the winners of the earlier $1 million Circular Design Challenge last October, these innovations will join a 12-month accelerator program in collaboration with Think Beyond Plastic, working with experts to make their innovations marketable at scale.

The Pitt team represents the Swanson School’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and includes Eric Beckman, Distinguished Service Professor and Co-Director of the University’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, Assistant Professor Susan Fullerton, and Associate Professor Sachin Velankar. The group was one of two winners in Category 1: “Make unrecyclable packaging recyclable,” and proposes using nano-engineering to create a recyclable material that can replace complex multi-layered packaging – mimicking the way nature uses just a few molecular building blocks to create a huge variety of materials.

whether we could transform a molecule from a product to service, with the most interesting applications of this being textiles and packaging.” continued on page 2

Pictured above is packaging such as juice pouches, which are made with bonded layers including aluminum, and different types of plastic, making them almost impossible to recycle. Because only 1-3 percent of such packaging is collected for recycling, food and beverage containers are among the top 5 items found on beaches and coastlines. To solve this problem, the University of Pittsburgh researchers propose manipulating polyethylene molecules to design layers that can each perform a specific function, creating a fully recyclable PE product.

(Illustration: henkel-diagrams.com) “Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean.” Science 13 Feb 2015: Vol. 347, Issue 6223, pp. 768-771. DOI: 10.1126/science.1260352

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Letter from the Chair Dear friends and colleagues, As we begin a new academic year it’s once again my pleasure to share the latest research news from our department. I am especially excited to welcome the AIChE Annual Meeting back to Pittsburgh this October 28 – November 2, and so I look forward to seeing many of you at the conference as well as at our Department Reception on Monday, October 29. My congratulations to our own Karl Johnson and Cliff Kowall, who are serving as Meeting Program Chairs, and Susan Fullerton, the Conference General Arrangements Chair. You can read more about their contributions in our special fold-out section.

This has been a banner year of research for our faculty, and I’m very proud of the international Circular Materials Challenge prize secured by Susan and colleagues Eric Beckman and Sachin Velankar. They represent one of only two American teams and the single University team among the five winners selected by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the New Plastics Economy to develop innovative solutions that prevent plastic from becoming waste that contaminates our oceans. Their cover story presents a game-changing method for making simple polymers more diverse in their inherent capabilities by altering the nanostructure of polyethylene.

Coming Full Circle...

Likewise, you’ll read about other faculty who are expanding transformative research in polymers, as well as nanoparticles and metal organic frameworks, and even rediscovering the unique properties of a hydrate first discovered about fifty years ago that today may have promising future with 21st century technology.

Lastly, I hope you will join me in welcoming James Martin II as our tenth U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering. He joins us from Clemson where he served as the Bob Benmosche Professor and Chair of the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering, and previously served more than 20 years on the civil engineering faculty at Virginia Tech. I’m proud to announce that his predecessor, Gerald Holder, will rejoin our Department as both Distinguished Service Professor and Dean Emeritus in fall 2019, following a well-deserved sabbatical.

Again, my thanks for your support of our department and research, and best wishes for an outstanding year ahead.

Sincerely,

Steven R. Little, PhD William Kepler Whiteford Professor and Department Chair

continued from page 1

According to Dr. Beckman, current packaging layers for food products and drink containers are made of several different materials that are responsible for maintaining freshness, blocking UV light, holding inks for labeling, etc.

Because the initial manufacturing process, the layers cannot be easily separated and therefore cannot be recycled.

The Pitt team’s solution is to alter the nano-structure of polyethylene – simple plastic – to mimic the properties of other complex materials (such as PET, EVOH, or even aluminum) in current laminate packaging. Since the basic chemistry of each layer would remain polyethylene, the packaging can then be collected with other plastics and recycled using traditional methods, removing it from the waste stream.

The importance to reducing and reusing plastic is clear: according to the foundation’s 2016 New Plastic Economy report, by 2050 oceans are expected to contain more plastics than fish (by weight), and the entire plastics industry will consume 20 percent of total oil production, and 15 percent of the annual carbon budget.

Wendy Schmidt, Lead Philanthropic Partner of the foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative, noted, “The technical innovations developed by our winners are exactly what is needed to begin to address the wasteful material culture of the past century that is creating increasing amounts of microplastics and plastic debris on our shorelines, in our oceans, landfills and even our own bodies.”

“Creating recyclable packaging is one of the toughest challenges if we want to create a true circular economy in the U.S., since tens of millions of tons of packaging waste go straight to the landfill each year,” Dr. Beckman said. “We hope that our design not only can set a new standard for high-performing and recyclable plastics, but will stimulate people to think about other ways in which we can transform molecular products to services by mirroring nature and taking advantage of nanostructure building blocks.”

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Vouching for Vonnegut Pitt Engineers Study Polymer that Freezes at Room Temperature

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n Kurt Vonnegut’s sci-fi classic “Cat’s Cradle,” ice-nine is a substance capable of raising water’s melting point from 32 to 114.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Once in contact with water, it spreads instantly and indefinitely, leaving frozen oceans and chilling consequences in its wake.

Luckily, as Vonnegut explains in the epigraph, ‘Nothing in this book is true.’

However, Assistant Professor John Keith and colleagues have discovered the fantastic behavior of a liquid polymer capable of freezing water at room temperature. The resulting mixture seemingly defies the second law of thermodynamics, which states that within an isolated system, entropy always increases.

“That disorder almost always causes mixtures to have a lower freezing point than either of the components individually, not higher,” explains Dr. Keith, who is also the Richard King Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy.

A mixture of salt and water, for example, freezes at lower temperatures than either salt or water individually. This quality makes salt well-suited for melting ice on roads and sidewalks in the winter.

However, when a particular polymer known as polyoxacyclobutane (POCB) is mixed with water, it raises the mixture’s freezing point from 32oF to about 100oF. The researchers published their findings in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Macromolecules (DOI: 10.1021/acs. macromol.8b00239).

The reaction is not unprecedented. Mixing certain metals in specific proportions creates alloys that have higher melting points than the individual metals. Because alloys are comprised of at least two differently sized atoms, favorable combinations of atoms can weave together to make strong chemical bonds that counteract the second law of thermodynamics.

“This behavior is very unusual among nonmetals,” says Associate Professor Sachin Velankar, an expert in polymer science. “To the best of my knowledge, POCB seems to be the only substance to display this behavior with water.”

POCB originally came to the university from chemical manufacturer DuPont as part of a research collaboration between the company and Professor Robert Enick, vice chair of research for the chemical engineering department. A graduate student in Dr. Enick’s lab noticed the liquid polymer became cloudy when mixed with drops of water, and more curiously, the resulting combination or “hydrate” was a soft paste when a precise amount of water was added.

Additional experiments revealed that well-ordered crystallites were forming between two liquids.

Dr. Keith and colleagues used computer modeling to find a stable hydrate structure where water molecules thread themselves throughout the polymer to form hydrogen bonds that hold the

material together like tiny zippers. “It takes less than an hour for the mixture to self-assemble at room temperature, and the final texture is like lip balm,” Dr. Keith says.

The Pitt researchers scoured scholarly journals for references to hydrates of POCB, which was produced by DuPont in the late 2000s with the name “Cerenol” because it’s made from corn (a “cereal” grain). With no leads, a conversation with Eric Beckman, Distinguished Service Professor and co-director of Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, tipped them off to other names the polymer might have been called in the past. The researchers then found that the hydrate structure had been discovered by a team of Japanese researchers in the late 1960s.

“The polymer goes by four or five names, and some are non-intuitive,” says Dr. Velankar. “After we found the previous studies, we realized that we had discovered an exciting facet of an old finding.” continued on page 12

Image of the polymer-water mixture turned upside-down to show its solid state.

Credit: Sachin Velankar

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Giannis Mpourmpakis Part of $800K DOE Study Targeting Safer Storage for Nuclear Waste

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bout 20 percent of the electricity produced in the United States of America is generated at nuclear power plants, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This means residents in one out of every five U.S. homes turn on their lights, use refrigerators and make toast – among other things – using energy generated by nuclear power plants.

Additionally, nuclear materials and technology is used in other areas, including radioactive isotopes to help diagnose and treat medical conditions; irradiation to help make pest-resistant seed varieties; and radioactive isotopes to date objects and identify elements in research.

While nuclear power generation emits relatively low amounts of air pollutants like carbon dioxide, it does produce nuclear waste, which can remain radioactive “for a few hours or several months or even hundreds of thousands of years,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

With 99 nuclear reactors – and two more under construction – operated by about 30 different power companies, America is the world’s largest producer of nuclear power. As of May 2018, there were 450 operating reactors in 30 countries worldwide, according to NRC reports.

As such, the safe storage and disposal of the radioactive waste is of paramount importance.

“Whenever we deal with nuclear energy, we are always concerned about how we deal properly with the waste that is generated,” said Jeffrey Rimer, the Abraham E. Dukler Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering. “We want to make sure that the nuclear waste is going to be stored for a sufficient time and not have issues with the release of this material into the environment.”

Dr. Rimer is the principal investigator on a multi-agency research team studying the

corrosion behavior of glass containers often used to store nuclear waste. Its goal is to find solutions to reduce or avoid the degeneration of the containers. Co-investigator is Giannis Mpourmpakis, Bicentennial Alumni Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the Swanson School.

“We are very excited to be part of this excellent team or researchers and try to find ways for safer storage of nuclear waste,” Dr. Mpourmpakis said.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $800,000 to the project, titled “Formation of Zeolites Responsible for Waste Glass Rate Acceleration: An Experimental and Computational Study for Understanding Thermodynamic and Kinetic Processes.”

Other members of the research team are: James Neeway, Radha Motkuri and Jarrod Crum, all from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

The PNNL personnel are experts on storage and glass dissolution and will be handling the assessment calculations, Rimer said. He added that Dr. Mpourmpakis brings expertise in computations and will conduct density-functional theory calculations on the progression of the aluminosilicate dissolution and zeolite nucleation.

“This is a nicely formulated team in that each partner is contributing something unique to the project, but at the same time there is a lot of synergy between each of the three institutions and the roles of each participant in this project,” Rimer said. “I think the project will, as a result of our collaborative efforts, make significant headway to improve the efficiency of nuclear waste storage.”

Author: Rashda Khan, UH Cullen College of Engineering.

Reprinted with permission.

Full of Hot Air

and Proud of It

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f the four states of matter, gases are the hardest to pin down. Gas molecules move quickly and wildly and don’t like to be confined.

When confined in a container, heat and pressure build and it doesn’t take long before the gas explodes. Gases, however are superficial – provide them with an attractive internal surface area, and they’ll pin themselves down in no time. This behavior is adsorption.

“When adsorption occurs, the gas molecules stop bumping into each other, reducing pressure,” says Assistant Professor Chris Wilmer. “So, by increasing a container’s internal surface area, we can store more gas in less space.”

Dr. Wilmer directs the Hypothetical Materials Lab, where he and his research group develop new ways to store, separate, and transport gases. The study, “Thermal Transport in Interpenetrated Metal-Organic Frameworks” (DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b05015), published in the American Chemical Society journal Chemistry of Materials, was featured on the journal cover with an image depicting interpenetrated metal organic frameworks or MOFs and designed by Kutay Sezginel, a chemical engineering graduate student in Dr. Wilmer’s Lab. MOFs are a promising class of porous materials, made of metal clusters bound to organic molecules. Discovered fewer than two decades ago, MOFs help rein in gases because their porous nanostructure has an extremely high surface area and can be custom engineered to be particularly sticky to certain gas molecules. MOFs are used for a variety of functions including gas storage, gas separation, sensing, and catalysis.

In the study, the researchers discovered that MOFs can dissipate even more heat from confined gases when they are woven into each other or “interpenetrated.” In fact, parallel, interpenetrated MOFs can cool off gases roughly at the same rate of two MOFs individually.

More efficient gas storage could lead to new possibilities in sustainable energy production and use. Oil remains the preferred power source for most transportation vehicles, but natural gas is a cheaper, more abundant, and cleaner alternative. Compressed natural gas tanks are too heavy and expensive to replace traditional gasoline tanks, but adsorbed natural gas tanks are both light and less expensive. A MOF tank can store same amount of fuel as typical gas tanks but with a quarter of the pressure. That’s only one potential application.

“Medical oxygen tanks, storing hazardous gases from semiconductor manufacturing, and technologies that aim to capture, separate, and store carbon from the air can all benefit from MOFs,” says Dr. Wilmer. “We believe MOFs have the same potential impact on the 21st century as plastics did in the 20th.”

Pictured above is an idealized interpenetrated MOF structure. The entangled MOF can dissipate heat roughly two times faster than the constituent MOFs could separately, potentially enabling more efficient gas storage.

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“ Doping” to Reduce Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

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n article in the sustainable chemistry journal ChemSusChem revealed researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are “doping” nanoparticles to enhance their ability to capture carbon dioxide and provide a raw source of carbon for industrial processes. Not to be confused with its negative use in athletics, “doping” in chemical engineering refers to adding a substance into another material to improve its performance.

Along with global temperatures, research into the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) is on the rise. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached a historic high of 408 parts per million, according to the latest measurements by NASA. Previous studies have shown the connection between greenhouse gases like CO2 and the warming trend, which began around the turn of the 20th century.

“Many of our industrial processes contribute to the alarming amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, so we need to develop new technologies to intervene,” said Assistant Professor Giannis Mpourmpakis.

“Capturing CO2 and converting it to useful chemicals can be both environmentally and industrially beneficial.”

Dr. Mpourmpakis co-authored the study titled “Design of CopperBased Bimetallic Nanoparticles for Carbon Dioxide Adsorption and Activation” (DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201702342) with other researchers in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering including Professor Götz Veser and three PhD students: James Dean, Natalie Austin, and Yahui Yang. An artistic depiction of the zirconium-doped copper nanomaterials appeared on one of the journal’s covers for Volume 11, Issue 7 in April 2018.

Through a series of computer simulations and lab experiments, the researchers designed and developed a stable catalyst for the capture and activation of CO2 by doping copper nanoparticles with zirconium. The researchers believe the nanoparticles have large potential for reducing the carbon footprint of certain processes such as burning fossil fuels. However, CO2 molecules are reluctant to change.

“CO2 is a very stable molecule which needs to be ‘activated’ to convert it. This activation happens by binding CO2 to catalyst sites that make the carbon-oxygen bond less stable. Our experiments confirmed the computational chemistry calculations in the Mpourmpakis group that doping copper with zirconium creates a good candidate for weakening the CO2 bonds,” Dr. Veser explained.

Mpourmpakis’ group used computational chemistry to simulate hundreds of potential experiments more quickly and less expensively than traditional lab methods and identified the most promising candidate dopant which was then experimentally verified.

Copper nanoparticles are well-suited for the conversion of CO2 to useful chemicals because they are cheap, and they are excellent hydrogenation catalysts. Through hydrogenation, CO2 can be converted to higher-value chemicals such as methanol (CH3OH) or methane (CH4). Unfortunately, converting CO2 also requires its activation which copper is not able to deliver. Zirconium gets along well with copper and naturally activates CO2.

“To have an effective dopant, you need to have sites on the catalyst surface that pass electrons to CO2,” Dr. Mpourmpakis said. “The dopant changes the electronic characteristics of materials, and we found zirconium is particularly effective at activating the CO2.”

The researchers tested a number of different nanoparticle configurations and found the zirconium-doped copper nanoparticles particularly promising catalysts for hydrogenating CO2 and have already begun testing their effectiveness.

Pictured above is a copper-based bimetallic nanoparticle designed to adsorb and activate carbon dioxide. (Credit: James Dean)

Making the Cover

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he back cover of Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Science featured an artistic depiction of research from the laboratory of Assistant Professor John Keith, the R.K. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy, into a simple and effective way of modeling chemical reactions in solutions.

Yasemin Basdogan, a PhD student in Dr. Keith’s lab, designed the back cover image, which shows several molecules reacting in a cross-shaped container slowly filling with a liquid. She says, “The red cross in the cover art symbolizes the medical red cross that you see on ambulances. Our model is like a paramedic team that comes with an ambulance: it’s a quick fix that can be really effective.”

Their study, “A paramedic treatment for modeling explicitly solvated chemical reaction mechanisms” (DOI: 10.1039/C8SC01424H), analyzed a very complex chemical system called the Morita-Baylis Hillman reaction. Previous modeling studies have traditionally struggled to explain subtle details of this reaction (DOIs: 10.1021/ja5111392, 10.1039/C7CP06508F), but Basdogan and Dr. Keith brought improvements to the modeling that allows better understanding of these types of chemical reactions that will impact areas of chemical engineering and chemistry.

“I’m particularly interested in how characterizing chemical reactions can help improve our understanding of the human body,” Basdogan explains. “By understanding catalysts working in solution we get closer to understanding how enzymes catalyze chemical reactions in your body. We need to first understand fundamental reactions before we can understand the even more complex systems.”

Basdogan developed the image for the back cover using tools and skills she learned in a course at the Swanson School of Engineering taught by Assistant Professor Chris Wilmer called ChE 3460: Advanced Scientific Visual Communication. The course teaches how to use modeling and animation tools

such as GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, and the Python programming language to create professional quality artwork based on students’ research.

“This cover art was my final project for the Advanced Scientific Visual Communication class,” says Basdogan. “Dr. Wilmer helped me throughout every step of the art project.”

Chemistry World, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, featured Basdogan and Dr. Keith’s work with the feature story “Errors in continuum solvent models unraveled at last.” The author Hannah Kerr writes:

“ [Basdogan and Keith] showed that continuum solvent models do not describe local solvation effects very well. This can lead to mechanistic steps like proton shuttling and charge transfer being modelled poorly.

As an alternative, [the researchers] developed a strategy that can be carried out by anyone with a general grasp of quantum chemistry.”

In the article, Dr. Keith also highlighted Basdogan’s efforts to complete the study:

“ ‘What I first thought would be 6–12 months of work ended up being far more challenging. Fortunately, I had a very talented first-year PhD student, Yasemin Basdogan, who stayed focused and never quit on the project – or me!,’ says Keith.”

Basdogan adds, “This manuscript is my sixth publication, but it has a special place in my heart because it is the first work that I completed mostly myself in the Keith Group, and I learned a lot of things along the way.” Basdogan is now in her third year as a PhD student and would like to stay in academia as a professor after completing her PhD. The Pitt Center for Research Computing contributed computing resources.

Appearing on the back cover of RSC journal Chemical Science, several molecules react in a cross-shaped container slowly filling with a liquid.

Credit: Yasemin Basdogan.

Cooking up Change for Rust Belt Chemical Manufacturers Götz Veser Leverages Nearly $10 Million in Grants to Bring American Chemical Manufacturing into the 21st Century Economic hardship, population decline, and the rapid decay of the manufacturing industry afflicted much of the Midwest and Great Lakes region in the 1980s earning it the nickname America’s “Rust Belt.” Around the same time across the Atlantic, chemical manufacturers in the United Kingdom were developing new technologies to compete in the global economy.

“The trend began in the U.K. and quickly spread to other parts of Europe like the Netherlands and Germany, but the U.S. stagnated,” said Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Professor Götz Veser.

“The chemical industry is extremely risk averse to begin with, and American manufacturers continue to view unproven, new technologies as much too risky at an industrial scale.”

Despite other economic sectors like higher education and healthcare embracing new technology in the region, manufacturers often tighten their rusty belts rather than invest in innovation. The reluctance to change has dulled their competitive edge for decades; however, Dr. Veser’s two new research collaborations between academia and industry, backed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and totaling nearly

$10 million, look to give American manufacturing a long overdue overhaul.

line, whereas batch processing is like a single, overworked mechanic.

“The focus is on novel process technology, i.e. our goal is to create the same products but much more efficiently. The U.S. has seen many incremental updates to technology over the years but very little real innovation. Jointly with our industry partners, we are trying to show the chemical industry that it doesn’t have to lock itself into technology from the 1950s and that we can implement new techniques without disrupting the entire economy,” Dr. Veser said.

“Batches are essentially big pots. You put in all the reactants, mix, heat, and pray. They can be as big as 50,000 gallon pots. Controlling this monster of ingredients is difficult. As a result, the efficiency is low, and you can lose a whole batch if something goes wrong,” said Dr. Veser.

Dr. Veser leads a team of researchers from Pitt and Ohio-based chemical manufacturer Lubrizol in a collaboration totaling $8 million over four years. Funding for the research comes from Lubrizol and the DOE’s Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Manufacturing Institute – a five-year, $70 million commitment to improving energy efficiency and lowering investment requirements for American manufacturers looking for upgrades.

A main goal of the Pitt-Lubrizol collaboration is to replace Lubrizol’s current practice of batch processing chemicals with continuous processing.

Continuous processing uses tubular reactors to provide much greater control of process conditions. It works like an automated assembly

The researchers will be transitioning Lubrizol’s production of succinimide – an oil additive that keeps fuel-burning byproducts from damaging engines. Dr. Veser hopes continuous processing will improve energy efficiency by more than 20 percent, not only in the lab but also in the manufacturing plant.

“Ideally, at the end of the grant period the result will be industrial implementation, not just the development of a new technology but immediate deployment. We will use Lubrizol’s pilot plant facilities for testing the technology, and they have committed to building a full-scale extension plant if the technology works as anticipated,” Dr. Veser said.

Continuous processing is one example of process intensification – a chemical engineering approach to rethinking manufacturing with an emphasis on sustainability. Dr. Veser will lead Pitt in another $4.6 million DOE grant. The project will apply continued on page 17

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Stepping Toward a Smaller Carbon Footprint Researchers Make a Breakthrough in Metal Organic Frameworks that Remove Carbon Dioxide from the Air and Convert it into Useful Chemicals

In other words, it is the energy needed to get the H atoms and the CO2 molecules together so that they can form the new compound. In our previous work we have been able to activate H2 by splitting two H atoms, but we have not been able to activate CO2 until now.”

Burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas releases carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 while the production of methanol and other valuable fuels and chemicals requires a supply of carbon. There is currently no economically or energy efficient way to collect CO2 from the atmosphere and use it to produce carbon-based chemicals, but researchers at the Swanson School of Engineering have just taken an important step in that direction.

The key to reducing the hydrogenation barrier was to identify a MOF capable of pre-activating carbon dioxide. Pre-activation is basically preparing the molecules for the chemical reaction by putting it into the right geometry, the right position, or the right electronic state. The MOF they modeled in their work achieves pre-activation of CO2 by putting it into a slightly bent geometry that is able to accept the incoming hydrogen atoms with a lower barrier.

The team worked with a class of nanomaterials called metal-organic frameworks or MOFs, which can be used to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and combine it with hydrogen atoms to convert it into valuable chemicals and fuels. Karl Johnson, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, led the research group as principal investigator.

“Our ultimate goal is to find a low-energy, low-cost MOF capable of separating carbon dioxide from a mixture of gases and prepare it to react with hydrogen,” Dr. Johnson said. “We found a MOF that could bend the CO2 molecules slightly, taking them to a state in which they react with hydrogen more easily.”

The Johnson Research Group published their findings in the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journal Catalysis Science & Technology (DOI: 10.1039/ c8cy01018h). The journal featured their work on its cover, illustrating the process of carbon dioxide and hydrogen molecules entering the MOF and exiting as CH2O2 or formic acid – a chemical precursor to methanol. For this process to occur, the molecules must overcome a demanding energy threshold called the hydrogenation barrier.

Dr. Johnson explained, “The hydrogenation barrier is the energy needed to add two H atoms to CO2, which transforms the molecules into formic acid.

Another key feature of this new MOF is that it selectively reacts with hydrogen molecules over carbon dioxide, so that the active sites are not blocked by CO2. “We designed a MOF that has limited space around its binding sites so that there is not quite enough room to bind CO2, but there is still plenty of room to bind H2, because it is so much smaller. Our design ensures that the CO2 does not bind to the MOF but instead is free to react with the H molecules already inside the framework,” Dr. Johnson said.

Dr. Johnson believes perfecting a single material that can both capture and convert CO2 would be economically viable and would reduce the net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. “You could capture CO2 from flue gas at power plants or directly from the atmosphere,” he said. “This research narrows our search for a very rare material with the ability to turn a hypothetical technology into a real benefit to the world.”

Pitt’s Center for Research Computing contributed computing resources.

Pictured above from the left, is a mixture of gases, including CO2 (red and gray), N2 (blue), and H2 (white) are exposed to the nanoporous metal-organic framework designed by the Johnson group. Only the CO2 and H2 enter the MOF, which rejects the N2. The catalytic sites within the framework convert the CO2 to formic acid (red, gray and white), a chemical precursor to methanol.

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Pitt and Lubrizol Engineering Team Unlock the Molecular Secrets to a Popular Polymer

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olyisobutylene (PIB) is a workhorse polymer that is found in a multitude of products, ranging from chewing gum, to tires, to engine oil and gasoline additives. Although commercially produced in large quantities since the 1940s, PIB chemistry was a mystery – scientists weren’t sure how the reaction mechanism that creates the polymer happens at the molecular level, which limited further potential.

However, a collaboration between the Swanson School of Engineering and Wickliffe, Ohio-based Lubrizol Corporation has unlocked the secrets of PIB’s reaction mechanism. The group’s findings were published in the ACS journal Catalysis (DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.8b01494).

Principal investigator is William Kepler Whiteford Professor Karl Johnson.

Funding for the research was provided by Lubrizol, which in 2014 established a $1.2 million strategic partnership with the Department and Swanson School to jumpstart research innovation that also offers opportunities for undergraduates to participate.

“PIB is an incredibly versatile polymer. It can have many different properties depending on how it is made. There are many different ‘recipes’ for making PIB, each employing different catalysts and reaction conditions, but it turns out that no one really knows what is happening at the molecular level. Finding out what is going on is important because it is harder to control a process that you don’t understand.”

Solving this catalytic puzzle is of interest to Lubrizol, which specializes in ingredients and additives for polymer-based products. Utilizing the University’s

Center for Research Computing to analyze the molecular processes, the Pitt/ Lubrizol group found that the assumed reaction mechanism was not correct and that initiation of the reaction requires a “superacid” catalyst.

“These findings provide fundamental insight into the PIB reaction mechanism that could potentially be used to design different catalysts and to control the reaction – and hence, the potential range of products – in ways that are currently not possible.” Dr. Johnson said. “This project shows the value of creating academic/industrial partnerships to pursue research that might not be possible if pursued independently.”

The research group included students Yasemin Basdogan, Bridget S. Derksen, and Minh Nguyen Vo; Assistant Professor John A. Keith, the R.K. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy; and Lubrizol researchers Adam Cox, research chemist, Cliff Kowall, technical fellow of process development, and Nico Proust, R&D technology manager.

Pictured above is a representation of the superacid catalyst, discovered by the Pitt/Lubrizol team and the PIB polymer chains. (Minh Nguyen Vo/Johnson Research Group)

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Improving American Chemical Manufacturing

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he U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and Lubrizol Corporation a collaborative grant for research into clean energy chemical manufacturing. The DOE grant, along with contributions from Pitt and Lubrizol, will total $7.5 million over a four-year period.

“The project will focus on applying advanced chemical engineering research to industrial-scale chemical manufacturing,” said Steven Little, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and Chair.

“The Pitt-Lubrizol partnership aligns well with University efforts to work with businesses to translate research into industry practices and impact the region’s economy in a positive way.”

The grant is part of the DOE’s Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) initiative, a partnership between the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the DOE. Both Pitt and Lubrizol are among the 45 members of the $70 million AIChE/RAPID Initiative for improving energy efficiency and industrial productivity through process intensification and modular manufacturing – two design approaches for chemical manufacturing at industry-relevant scales.

“At Lubrizol, we are working with thousands of tons of chemicals per year,” said Cliff Kowall, Lubrizol technical fellow and corporate engineer.

“The end objective is to provide the design basis to allow Lubrizol to deploy these innovative processes with sharp reductions in waste generation, utility, and energy costs, capital cost, and footprint accompanied by an improvement in quality consistency.”

Kowall was integral in establishing the initial partnership between Pitt and Lubrizol, which began in 2014 with a $1.2 million Strategic Alliance agreement. The partnership brought about opportunities for students to learn about engineering needs in an industrial environment, while at the same time benefiting Lubrizol through research projects tailored to its business operations. Last month, Pitt and Lubrizol renewed the partnership, worth roughly $1 million invested over a three-year period.

“The University of Pittsburgh was by far the best fit for us to establish a relationship with a university, largely due to the enthusiasm of the Pitt Chemical Engineering leadership team,” said Kowall. “Lubrizol made a long-term commitment initially, and now we’ve extended it for three more years with the expectation of it lasting indefinitely.”

The partnership helped Pitt’s Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department develop the course “Introduction to Chemical Product Design” (ChE 0214). Open to students in their sophomore year, the course teaches how to design products specific to a customer’s needs. In a traditional paradigm, engineering students don’t work on design projects until their senior years.

“This alliance has led to new educational programs that are first-of-their-kind in the country, exposing our students to unique opportunities to learn design principles and leading to multiple awards and even a spin-out company for our students,” said Dr. Little.

The follow-up course, “Taking Products to Market: The Next Step in Chemical Product Design” (ChE 0314), focuses on entrepreneurship and the skills necessary to successfully turn their ideas into products or companies.

“About half of the initial $1.2 million agreement went into the development of these courses and the resources to ensure our students’ success,” said Dr. Little. “Collaborating with Lubrizol directly, plus a jumpstart on product design, really gives our students a competitive advantage after graduation.”

Another feature of the partnership was the creation of the ‘University of Pittsburgh Physical Property Internship,’ which is a nine-month internship targeted at chemical engineering students who graduate in December and are intending to go to graduate school in the fall.

“This helps Lubrizol as well as the student who might have trouble finding something worthwhile to do in that rather awkward time. Three of the first four recipients became full-time employees,” said Kowall. “We have put emphasis on recruiting co-op students from Pitt. We work with the faculty to identify high potential candidates. Retention has been excellent in keeping co-op students as full-time employees.”

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Back-to-Back Journal Covers for ChemE Research Teams

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he covers of the Tissue Engineering, Part A and Advanced Healthcare Materials scientific journals in December highlighted two projects originating from the Swanson School of Engineering’s Little Lab, which focuses on developing biomimetic therapies for human injury and disease.

“While it’s a coincidence that the two covers appeared in the same week, this achievement showcases the excellent work to change the paradigm of how we treat disease being done by all the team members of the Little Lab and its collaborators,” said Steven R. Little, co-author of the two papers.

Both projects – one a research paper and the other a review – dealt with topics in “controlled delivery” and involved multi-disciplinary teams of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh departments of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Bioengineering, Orthopaedic Surgery, and Ophthalmology.

“The research paper proposes a cell-free approach to bone engineering based on the directing the migration of the body own stem cells, while the review discusses innovative approaches to treat inflammatory eye diseases,” said Riccardo Gottardi, research assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a co-author of the two papers. Dr. Gottardi has a second appointment in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and assists Dr. Little with managing the Little Lab. The cover of Tissue Engineering, Part A featured an image from the study “Programmed Platelet-Derived Growth Factor-BB and Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2 Delivery from a hybrid Calcium Phosphate/Alginate Scaffold” (DOI: 10.1089/ten.tea.2017.0027). The research paper described using a three-dimensional scaffold for releasing growth-stimulating proteins in a controlled manner to treat bone fractures that aren’t healing properly.

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The lead author of the paper was Emily Bayer, who recently graduated from her position as a trainee in the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s Cellular Approaches to Tissue Engineering and Regeneration (CATER) Training Program. Bayer was a member of the Little Lab while working on the paper. The research team was joined by Abhijit Roy, research assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and Prashant N. Kumta, the Edward R. Weidlein Chair Professor at the Swanson School of Engineering and School of Dental Medicine.

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The Japanese team, using similar X-ray techniques as those interpreted by Watson and Crick to identify the double helix in DNA, had found similar hydrate structures by melting high molecular weight forms of the polymer that were solid at room temperature. That study, which appeared in ACS Macromolecules in 1970, has gone relatively unnoticed in the five decades since its publication. The innovation from the Pitt researchers is that similar hydrates can form spontaneously with lower molecular weight forms of the polymer that are liquid at room temperature, thus eliminating the need for melting before mixing with water.

“The polymer can also gently suck out humidity from the air naturally,” says Dr. Velankar. “We felt this behavior was a curiosity, but a very interesting one. Our research has been mostly a fundamental exploration of a very unusual phenomenon, but there are many potential applications to consider.”

The researchers have already collaborated with Alexander Star in Pitt’s Department of Chemistry to coat a nanotube electrode with the polymer to turn it into a computer memory device, with results published in the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials (DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b00964).

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The cover of Advanced Healthcare Materials featured a graphic for the study “Ocular Therapeutics: Modern Therapeutic Approaches for Noninfectious Ocular Diseases Involving Inflammation” (DOI: 10.1002/ adhm.201700733). The paper reviewed inflammatory eye disease treatments and was led by co-first authors Michelle L. Ratay and Elena Bellotti. Ratay, a graduate student researcher in the Department of Bioengineering, and Dr. Bellotti, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, are both members of the Little Lab.

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One potential application will certainly not be a doomsday device like Vonnegut’s ice-nine because POCB cannot spread instantly or indefinitely throughout water sources. Instead of triggering the apocalypse, Dr. Keith thinks discovering this polymer’s freezing behavior could herald new innovations.

“Now that we know an example of a polymerwater mixture with these qualities, we can now search for other mixtures that might have other interesting properties,” says Dr. Keith. “I’m very optimistic that this is an exciting new class of crystalline materials that spontaneously form from mixtures of liquids.”

ENGINEERING.PITT.EDU

Pitt Chem-E-Car Revs up for National Competition Runners, cyclists, and race car drivers can all benefit from visualizing themselves crossing the finish line before a competition. But what happens when they don’t know where the finish line will be? During the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Chem-E-Car Competition, student engineers spend months designing a shoebox-sized car powered by chemical reactants that can travel a distance between 50 and 100 feet, but judges don’t reveal that distance until an hour before the competition.

A team of undergraduate students from the Swanson School of Engineering entered the Chem-E-Car Competition at the AIChE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference this past April at Princeton University. Their car, “The Volts Wagon,” finished in the top five, earning a spot in the National Chem-E-Car Competition at the annual AIChE conference in Pittsburgh this October.

Before the conference, the teams only knew they had to create a car able to travel somewhere between 15 and 30 meters (about 50 – 100 feet) while carrying a payload between zero and 500 milliliters of water (about zero – 1.1 pounds). The car had to be powered by chemical reactants and include a second chemical reaction as a stopping mechanism. It had to go the distance, but it would be disqualified for overshooting the distance by too much.

On the day of the competition, the judges revealed the target distance would be 60.4 feet and the cars had to carry a payload of 400 milliliters of water.

The Pitt car featured a zinc air battery and a chemical chameleon stopping mechanism. It passed safety tests for pressure, gases, temperature, exhaust, and chemicals.

:: Fall 2018 | 13

The judges also evaluated the cars based on creativity of the design and incorporation of green engineering principles. Students completed safety training and submitted an Engineering Documentation Package containing equipment specifications, material safety documentation sheets, and other information about their design. The morning of the competition, the teams presented posters detailing research they conducted to create their cars.

After the judges gathered all of their evaluation data and The Volts Wagon completed its run, the Pitt students finished in fourth place in a field of 19 teams.

During the conference, another Pitt team came in third place of 18 teams in a chemical engineering-themed Jeopardy Competition. Twenty Pitt students attended the conference in total, and teams for both competitions comprised a diverse group of chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering undergraduate students.

Members of the Pitt AIChE student chapter received donations from alumni, family, and friends to pay for conference expenses through the Pitt ENGAGE crowdsourcing platform. The Chem-E-Car team also received support from Lubrizol, BASF Corporation, the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, and the Student Government Board (SGA).

The AIChE Mid-Atlantic Region includes professional chapters and universities throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.

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ChemE Undergraduates Take Their Research to

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niversity of Pittsburgh undergraduates Erin Hunter and Nicholas Waters traveled to Lucca, Italy this summer to present at the 2018 Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Biointerface Science. Both students presented work from their past year of research with Tagbo Niepa, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering.

Dr. Niepa, who was co-chair of the GRS on Biointerface Science, knew it was uncommon for undergraduates to attend this meeting but thought that Hunter and Waters might benefit from the experience.

“Erin and Nick are impressive undergraduates with a strong academic record and scientific curiosity,” said Dr. Niepa. “They were the first students to join my new lab at Pitt and demonstrated a strong dedication, high level of maturity, and responsibility for the tasks I assigned them. It was my personal goal to provide them with this prestigious and eye-opening experience; and I was extremely delighted that GRC made a special exception allowing these emerging researchers to present their work alongside experts in the field of Biointerface Science.”

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Waters, a junior chemical engineering student, was granted a travel award

by Pitt’s University Honors College to support his participation in the conference. His research focuses on understanding how bacteria interact with fluid interfaces.

“We work with Alcanivorax borkumensis, an oil-degrading bacteria that is capable of emulsifying the oil and water phases by interacting with the oilwater interface,” said Waters. “This work is significant because the findings could help us better understand how to use bacteria for bioremediation of crude oil spills and/or microbial enhanced oil recovery from the ground.”

One year later, Waters has now collected enough data that will likely lead to a publication in the near future. Regarding the conference, he said, “I greatly enjoyed being able to meet and discuss my work in a professional setting and receive high-level feedback from others working in similar fields.”

Hunter, a junior chemical engineering student, also spent her sophomore year in Dr. Niepa’s lab. Her research focuses on examining microbial dynamics in artificial confinements, referred to as microbial nanocultures.

“Because of the amount of competition among species in a sample, traditional methods of culturing – such as using a flask – can be ineffective,” explains Hunter. “We can isolate and examine the individual bacterial species when we take a few milligram sample that we swabbed and encapsulate into smaller 5-7 nanoliter capsules,” said Hunter. “The goal of my research is to show that by using this process, it is now possible to study and collect data on these previously ‘unculturable species.’”

Hunter believes that the Gordon Research Seminar was a valuable experience that helped guide her academic and research career. “It is helpful to learn about other people’s studies because it can inspire new ideas for your own research,” she said. “Being the only undergraduate students there, it was nice to talk to current PhD students about their paths to graduate school.”

In fall 2018, Waters returns to Dr. Niepa’s lab to continue his research, and Hunter will start a yearlong internship with McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

“Their outstanding presentations initiated high-level conversations and promoted our work in the space of microbial interactions with solid or fluid interfaces.” said Dr. Niepa. “Erin and Nick are a testament to Pitt’s commitment to preparing its students for global scientific leadership”

Pictured on opposite page from left to right are Dr. Tagbo Niepa, Erin Hunter, and Nicholas Waters.

New Faculty JOAQUIN RODRIQUEZ

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etroleum refinery expert Joaquin Rodriquez joins the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering this fall as Assistant Professor. Prior to Pitt, Dr. Rodriguez was President of Universidad Monteavila (2005-15) in Caracas, Venezuela, an institution with more than 400 faculty and staff, 1,500 students and 2,500 alumni that he helped to establish two decades ago.

In addition to his academic tenure, Dr. Rodriguez has 15 years of technical experience in thermal conversion processes, advanced petrochemical techniques and the manufacturing of refinery specialty products including cokes, asphalts, lubricants, and waxes. As specialty products business leader for Petroleos de Venezuela, he directed technology intelligence monitoring, research, innovation, development, refinery technical assistance and international negotiations. He coauthored one U.S. Patent, three peer reviewed papers, 19 conference presentations and more than 70 technical reports.

“With the potential future growth of the petrochemical industry in the tristate region, Joaquin’s research and business expertise greatly enhances our academic portfolio,” said Steven Little, Department Chair. “He will also coordinate efforts to develop a strategic vision and plan of activities for the Department for Outreach, and expand on our initiatives for Diversity and Inclusion.”

Dr. Rodriguez received his MS and PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, with his thesis on “Needle Coke and Carbon Fibers Production from Venezuelan Oil Residues.” He was recognized with the James Coull Award for Department’s most outstanding graduate student, and the Phillip Walker Award at the 20th Biennial Conference on Carbon. In his 20 years of various academic roles he has contributed to the development of academic contents for four careers, led the organization of seven graduate programs, promoted the foundation of 15 research centers, arranged for 50 cooperation programs, taught 22 academic courses and five seminars, and delivered 13 lectures at conferences and 40 speeches and keynotes.

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PhD Recipients Summer 2018 Natalie Austin (Advisor: Giannis Mpourmpakis) Theoretical investigation of CO2 activation and chemical conversion on catalytic nanoparticles Shardul Wadekar (Advisor: Radisav D. Vidic) Separation potential characterization and its role in selecting nanofiltration membranes for the removal of inorganic ions Junyi Yang (Advisor: Sachin Velankar) On the rheology and morphology developments of ternary liquid/liquid/particles system with capillary force Spring 2018 Mitchell C. Groenenboom (Advisor: John A. Keith) Reducing CO2 and corrosion: insights from thermodynamic descriptors calculated with density functional theory Pavlo Kostetskyy (Advisor: Giannis Mpourmpakis) Structure-activity relationships in acid-catalyzed alcohol dehydration reactions Prasad Prakash Patel (Advisor: Prashant N. Kumta) Fundamental study of 1-D semiconductor and nanoscale electrode architectures for photoelectrochemical water splitting Jiaqi Zhao (Advisor: Lei Li) Study of iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles in cancer cell destruction and cell separation Fall 2017 Li Ang Zhang (Advisor: Robert S. Parker) Model-based decision support for sepsis endotypes Summer 2017 Christine Carcillo (Advisor: Robert S. Parker) Modeling chemotherapy- and radiotherapy-induced hematological toxicity Timothy Knab (Advisor: Robert S. Parker) Model-based closed-loop glucose control in critical illness Thomas Richardson (Advisor: Ipsita Banerjee) Fundamental study of alginate-based 3D platforms for the propagation and pancreatic differentiation of human embryonic stem cells

Department Honors Harvard Chemist George Whitesides as 2018 Covestro Distinguished Lecturer

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n recognition of his exemplary research in the fields of surface chemistry, microfluidics and nanotechnology, Harvard University’s George Whitesides was named the 2018 Covestro Distinguished Lecturer by the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.

Dr. Whitesides currently is the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

The Covestro Distinguished Lectureship (a continuation of the Bayer Distinguished Lectureship) is presented annually by the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and recognizes excellence in chemical education, outreach and research. The lecture is sponsored by Covestro LLC, a world-leading supplier of high-tech polymer materials.

“From his groundbreaking research in surface chemistry, Dr. Whitesides advanced the field of nanoscience and impacted diverse fields from electronics to medicine,” said Department Chair Steven R. Little. “His innovations have helped to bridge so many disciplines and impacted the careers of several of our faculty, and so our department is honored to welcome him.”

“Covestro is proud to sponsor this event in partnership with the Swanson School of Engineering, and we join the university in welcoming Dr. Whitesides back to Pittsburgh,” said Don S. Wardius, Manager of University Relations, Covestro LLC. “Through his pioneering contributions to diagnostics, chemistry, biology and polymer science, Dr. Whitesides embodies Covestro’s passion for pushing boundaries in the pursuit of innovation. We’re honored to support a platform where he can share his insights with the next generation of innovators.”

Dr. Whitesides received his AB degree from Harvard University in 1960, and PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1964 (with J.D. Roberts). He began his independent career at M.I.T., and is now the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University. His current research interests include physical and organic chemistry, materials science, biophysics, water, self-assembly, complexity and simplicity, origin of life, dissipative systems, affordable diagnostics, and soft robotics.

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Cooking up Change...

continued from page 8

similar process intensification approaches to finding an efficient way to convert methane to benzene. The technology could have even greater appeal in the region as the new Shell cracker plant comes online in Beaver County, north of Pittsburgh. The current cracker plant only uses ethane, a much smaller fraction of natural gas, leaving methane to be burned.

intermediates called aromatics,” Dr. Veser noted.

“This is a well-known process that has, however, not been commercialized because of very low efficiency of the conventional process routes. We believe the use of microwave radiation instead of conventional heating can result in drastic improvements to efficiency and may render the process economical.”

“Methane, the main component in natural gas, can be converted into valuable chemical

The principal investigator of the study is John Hu, Statler Chair in Engineering in the Statler College

of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University. Dr. Hu and his team at WVU will work with researchers from the National Energy Technology Laboratory to test the efficacy of the microwave reactors while Dr. Veser and his team will design new catalysts and materials to enable the process. As part of the academic/ industry partnership encouraged by RAPID, Shell will join the study to evaluate process economics and industrial viability.

Distinguished Alumni Award: James M. Pommersheim, PhD

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his year’s Distinguished Alumnus of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering is James M. Pommersheim, BSCHE ’60, MS ’62, PhD ’70, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Bucknell University.

Dr. Pommersheim first became interested in teaching while serving as a teaching assistant at Pitt where he had many opportunities to interact with the faculty of the department, most notably its chair, Edward Stuart.

These engagements led to his successful tenure as Professor of Chemical Engineering at Bucknell University from 1965 to 2003 and fall semester 2006.

Dr. Pommersheim specialized in conceptual and mathematical modeling in chemical engineering with research centered on transport in cementitious systems. At Bucknell he was instrumental in establishing the transport theory sequences of courses as well as a course in applied mathematics which emphasized modeling along with mathematical methods. He also taught operations research in the Management Department. He served as Visiting Research Professor at The Pennsylvania State University in the summer semesters of 1988 and 1989. At Syracuse University, he served as Visiting Professor, Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, in the spring semesters of 2005, 2006, and 2011.

In 2014, Pitt’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering established the James Martin Pommersheim Award for Excellence in Teaching in honor of a significant legacy gift made by Dr. Pommersheim. The award recognizes one outstanding departmental faculty member annually in the areas of lecturing, teaching, research methodology, and research mentorship of students, as well as the conduction of seminars, tutorials, and recitations.

In addition to his extensive teaching career, Dr. Pommersheim served as a research associate for the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Pictured are Dean Gerald Holder (left) and Dr. Steven Little (right) presenting the Distinguished Alumni Award to Dr. Pommersheim.

(NIST), Occidental Research and Petroleum, Mobil Oil, and NASA. He provided consulting services for the Center for Building Technology and for the Materials Research Institute at Penn State. He has authored a number of publications and held many presentations at national and international meetings.

Dr. Pommersheim is a member of AIChE as well as several other professional and honorary societies. His specific honors and awards include: Faculty Advisor to Outstanding Senior Design Teams in the Smith College of Engineering, Syracuse University (2005 and 2006); Outstanding Paper Award from the Society of Coating Technology (1996); ASEE Mid-Atlantic Region Award for Excellence in Instruction of Engineering (1984); Class of 1956 Award for Inspirational Teaching, Bucknell University (1985); Invited Scholar, Faculty Development Program of Queen’s University (1982); and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, Bucknell University (1979).

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AWARDS HONORS Faculty Cliff Kowall, Senior Technical Fellow at the Lubrizol Corporation and leader of the PittLubrizol Strategic Alliance, was elected an AIChE Fellow. The grade of Fellow is AIChE’s highest grade of membership and is achieved only through election by the AIChE Board of Directors, generally upon recommendation of the AIChE Admissions Committee.

The Controlled Release Society named Steven Little as the recipient of its 2018 Young Investigator award. The honor annually recognizes one individual in the world, 40 years of age or younger, for outstanding contributions in the science of controlled release. Dr. Little focuses on novel drug delivery systems that mimic the body’s own mechanisms of healing and resolving inflammation. He was also recipient of the 2018 Pittsburgh Section ACS Pittsburgh Award for his service and commitment to the field of chemistry, with particular emphasis on his efforts to reinvent chemical engineering education in the Pittsburgh area.

Assistant Professors James McKone and Christopher Wilmer were honored as new Fellows at the first Scialog: Advanced Energy Storage, hosted by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Drs. McKone and Wilmer were among Scialog’s outstanding 58 early-career researchers from U.S. academic institutions who participated in intensive discussions aimed at developing proposals for seed funding of transformative energy storage systems and novel

research ideas to greatly improve efficiencies in advanced batteries, supercapacitors and related systems.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) named Assistant Professor Giannis Mpourmpakis as an “Emerging Investigator” in a special issue of the publication. The issue highlights work from researchers at the forefront of their discipline.

Dr. Mpourmpakis leads the Computer-Aided Nano and Energy Lab (CANELA) where his group researches the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials with potential applications in diverse nanotechnological areas ranging from energy generation and storage to materials design and catalysis. He contributed his paper “Understanding the Gas Phase Chemistry of Alkanes with First-Principles Calculations” (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jced.7b00992) to the ACS special issue.

Professor Robert Parker was the 2017 winner of the Department’s James Pommersheim Award for Excellence in Teaching in Chemical Engineering and the 2017 recipient of the Swanson School’s Board of Visitors Award. The Pommersheim Award was established by the Department and James M. Pommersheim ’70 to recognize departmental faculty in the areas of lecturing, teaching, research methodology, and research mentorship of students. The Board of Visitors Award is given for faculty excellence in teaching, research and service, and for contributions to the University, the Swanson School, and the engineering discipline.

William Wagner, director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and professor of surgery, bioengineering and chemical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, was named the 2018 Inventor of the Year award by the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Law Association.

Under his direction, the McGowan Institute is a leader in medical device commercialization and regenerative medicine technologies. The institute has made an international impact on healthcare with its development of circulatory assist devices, pulmonary assist devices and extracellular matrix-based materials for regenerative repair and healing. In addition to leading the McGowan Institute, Dr. Wagner also co-founded Neograft Technologies, which is developing new treatment options for coronary artery bypass surgery, and has raised over $34 million in funding.

The Microscopy Society of America (MSA) inducted Professor Judith Yang into its 2018 class of Fellows. MSA recognizes fellows as the most distinguished members of the Society who have made contributions to the advancement of the fields of microscopy and microanalysis.

Dr. Yang’s citation for fellowship reads, “For world leading research in gas-surface reactions, especially oxidation, and catalytic reactions using innovative in situ electron microscopy techniques.”

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Students Undergraduate Nadine Humphrey is a 2018 recipient of the Vira I. Heinz Award, which provides funding for women who have never traveled internationally and prepares them for tomorrow’s global challenges. In addition to international experience, recipients are required to attend two leadership development retreats in Pittsburgh and “create a Community Engagement Experience” designed to use their new-found skills to impact their local community in a positive way.

Humphrey will be spending her time abroad in Kobe, Japan where she will explore the language and culture. During the VIH Spring Retreat, participants established goals in a specific area of focus, and she chose to examine economic opportunity in Japan.

Senior Isaac Mastalski was named a finalist for the Swanson School’s annual George Washington Prize, which recognizes Pitt seniors who display outstanding leadership, scholarship and performance as determined by a committee of eight professional engineers and Swanson School faculty.

Glucaglin, a concept for a multifunctional pump for diabetics, was one of four 4th place winners in the University of Pittsburgh’s Randall Family Big Idea Competition. Team members from Chemical and Petroleum Engineering include undergraduates Jake Muldowney, Evan Sparks, and Shane Taylor. This year’s competition was the largest yet, with more than 300 students of all levels, from freshman to doctoral, participating in the

Alumni initial round comprising more than 100 teams.

Teams led by Swanson School of Engineering students captured at least one win in every place.

The American Society for Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO) selected chemical engineering graduate student Alexandra May as a finalist for the Willem Kolff Award at its 64th annual meeting. The award, named after the late Dutch physician who invented the original artificial kidney, recognizes the top abstracts at each annual meeting. May is a graduate student in the Swanson School’s Cardiovascular Bioengineering Training Program and works in the Medical Devices Laboratory under the direction of William Federspiel, a William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering. The lab develops clinically significant devices for the treatment of pulmonary and cardiovascular ailments by utilizing engineering principles of fluid flow and mass transfer.

Undergraduate Anthony Joseph O’Brian was among four Swanson School students who received 2018 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship honorable mentions. Eight other engineering students received full fellowships.

Undergraduate Jared Raszewski and mechanical engineering undergraduate Emelyn Jaroswere winners of the Pitt Blast Furnace student idea accelerator. Their concept, DisSolves, addresses the problem of measuring and mixing protein powders with a liquid mix in a naturally dissolving, single-serve wrapper.

Sean I. Plasynski, a 28-year veteran of federal fossil energy research, was named acting director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Dr. Plasynski was named to the leadership post by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg following the retirement of Grace Bochenek, PhD, who served as director for three years. Plasynski holds a BS, MS and PhD in chemical engineering from Pitt, and an MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business. NETL, part of DOE’s national laboratory system, supports the DOE mission to advance the energy security of the United States.

Hanwant Singh was the 2018 recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, NASA’s Highest Honor. The award is presented to “those who display distinguished service, ability, or courage, and have personally made a contribution representing substantial progress to the NASA mission.” Dr. Singh received his PhD in chemical and petroleum engineering from Pitt in 1972 under the mentorship of Professor Emeritus George Klinzing.

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By Kelsey Sadlek, MSChE ‘18

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yet private room and a refrigerator, water, and breastmilk storage bags.

into talks, much as churches have provided “cry rooms” with video access to the services.

“If there is no resource at the venue that is comfortable and reasonably private and has what you need, then you return to your hotel room, which could be far away. Then you miss a big portion of the technical conference,” she says. “It’s a penalty to a lactating mother when it’s actually really straight forward for organizers to provide the resources to allow nursing moms to both attend to their newborns and participate in the conference.”

Dr. Fullerton also hopes to make the conference more accommodating to participants attending with families. Since the conference takes place the week of Halloween, she plans to arrange trick-or-treating for families who want to take part.

At the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) conference in Pittsburgh this October, Assistant Professor Susan Fullerton is drawing upon her experience as a mother at past conferences to make this gathering more accommodating for nursing mothers and families.

In addition to providing a proper space, Dr. Fullerton stresses the importance of advertising its availability. “One of my biggest issues when I’ve gone to conferences that do provide nursing stations is an inconvenient location that is difficult to find, and when you do find it there’s a line because it’s the only facility available.”

She plans to make all attendees aware of these rooms and their accessibility well before the conference begins to encourage new mothers, who may otherwise be deterred, to attend. “We are fortunate to have a fantastic Mother’s room in a central location at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center – the second floor just outside of Hall B – and our Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering will sponsor the supplies.”

Often struggling to find proper nursing stations at conferences when she was a new mom, Dr. Fullerton plans to increase the visibility and quality of such stations at the upcoming conference. “I’m a mother of two, and I’ve attended many conferences while nursing. It’s important to me as General Arrangements Chair to have this accommodation ready and welcoming to new mothers.” She notes that proper nursing stations are easy to implement, with a sizeable

However, even with a proper, well-advertised room, Dr. Fullerton stresses that the nursing attendees still miss a significant amount of technical content while pumping. On average, a nursing mother must pump every two to three hours for about 20 to 30 minutes per session, resulting in missing about one hour per day, or a total of five hours per conference. To keep nursing mothers engaged in the conference, Dr. Fullerton would eventually like to provide a way to Skype

Dr. Fullerton to Make AIChE Annual Meeting More Welcoming to Attendees with Families With a philosophical focus on research and recognition, international academic conferences often overlook the needs of participants attending with family, especially those who may have an infant to nurse.

In the future, Dr. Fullerton would also like to facilitate onsite childcare. Though it cannot be arranged for the upcoming meeting, she understands the struggle to find childcare during a conference. “It’s much easier to choose not to attend and skip the conference for a year or two than it is to identify legitimate, safe, local daycare in a town you’re unfamiliar with.”

Fellow faculty member and AIChE board member Karl Johnson commented, “I think it’s just great what she is doing. I was the general arrangements chair a few years ago, and I never even thought of making the changes she is making.” Dr. Fullerton responded, “If you haven’t had this need you might never think of it! I can say that with absolute certainty because prior to having children I would have never thought of this.” A scientist at heart, she explained her lack of data on the matter: “I’ve now been a mother for five years, so prior to that I wasn’t paying attention to these issues. Even now, I really only have five years of data – or rather maternal experience.”

While women remain underrepresented in the science and engineering workforce, and STEM careers are not widely perceived as familycompatible, Dr. Fullerton is making strides to change these statistics and perceptions. “We’re in a transition period. Accommodations for nursing mothers was unheard of not very long ago. I think AIChE can really make a splash by making improvements in this area.”

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Bridges of Opportunity AIChE Pittsburgh Conference Co-Chairs are “Energized” for the Opportunities Brought by Disruption

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or the past two years, faculty from the Swanson School’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering have been involved with the 2018 AIChE Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh. Although the conference was last in Pittsburgh six years ago, the region has since experienced a sea change in energy research and industry. The vast Marcellus and Utica shale deposits have created another energy boom in a region built upon legacies of coal, iron, steel and nuclear power.

This evolution was not lost on AIChE Meeting Program Co-Chairs Karl Johnson, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at Pitt; and Cliff Kowall, Senior Technical Fellow in the Process Development Department and the Corporate Engineer at the Lubrizol Corporation in Wickliffe, Ohio. Since the formation of a strategic research partnership between the Department and Lubrizol in 2014, the two have a developed a greater understanding of academic-industrial partnerships.

Kowall’s more than four decades in industry informed his AIChE conference session, “What the Heck Happened? Past, Present & Future Disruptions to the Chemical/Fuels Business.” Similarly, “The Future of Energy in the Region, Nation, and World” session co-chaired by Dr. Johnson is inspired by the Pittsburgh’s history and future in energy R&D. “AIChE challenged us to develop sessions with a regional appeal and a voice to the changes in the chemical engineering workplace,” Kowall said. “Pittsburgh presents a distinctive picture of how disruption – both bad and good – creates socioeconomic change and how to adapt and better prepare for future occurrences.”

The co-chairs have a long history in the region: Dr. Johnson has been a professor at Pitt since 1995,

and Kowall has been in the chemical industry for more than four decades. The two agree that disruptions have shaped how academia, industry, and the workforce react to seismic shifts in the economy. Today, energy diversification is leading that change.

“AIChE in Pittsburgh presents an opportunity to highlight the evolution of the energy industry here,” Dr. Johnson says. “The energy landscape has been upended just in the last decade, and alliances built between researchers like myself and companies like Lubrizol are identifying opportunities to exploit energy technologies and spin them off into new areas of applied research that we couldn’t do individually.”

Pittsburgh has long been the poster child for the impact of industrial revolution and disruption. The city and surrounding ten-county region once boasted one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world. However, an inability to predict disruption – more advanced and economical steel manufacturing developed overseas, as well as an over-reliance on one industry – cratered the regional economy in the 1980s.

Since then, the region’s public-private partnerships have helped to build a more robust and diverse economy supported by industries from higher education and healthcare, to energy, advanced manufacturing and finance.

“In my session, my colleagues and I will talk about how these changes shaped our careers and really made us take a second and even third look at how we need to adapt,” Kowall says. “There was always angst, but also opportunity if you paid attention and tried to anticipate the next disruption and how you can take advantage of it. I think chemical engineers have greater flexibility in doing that.”

Dr. Johnson adds that these disruptions have shaped the nature of higher education in the classroom, the lab and the field.

“The history of our department shows the impact of energy on our curriculum and research,” Dr. Johnson says. “Ours was the world’s first petroleum engineering program in 1910. Later, we branched into polymers, materials and molecular science to the point where petroleum was almost a footnote.

But today, my colleagues and I have a stronger and broader focus on energy, from carbon sequestration and catalysis to improved hydrofracturing and energy storage technologies.

“The growth of the shale industry here in the last few years is indicative of that. Current downstream opportunities are located along the Gulf, where that industry was born, so we’re shipping resources we harvest here for manufacturing there,” Dr. Johnson notes. “But Shell is building just north of the city what will be the largest ethane cracker in the U.S., which means we will have the opportunity to exploit those resources here, giving our students greater opportunity for careers in industry or as entrepreneurs.”

Dr. Johnson and Kowall say that their AIChE sessions are as relevant for tomorrow’s chemical engineering student but even more so for today’s seasoned professional.

“I have always had a deep belief in continuing education,” Kowall says. “None of these disruptions should be surprises, so it’s important for us to teach the next generation how disruptions are the ultimate opportunity for growth.”

“This is an exciting time to be a chemical engineer,” Dr. Johnson adds, “and I hope our colleagues from around the world can learn in Pittsburgh not only what the future brings, but how we can help our students and AIChE members benefit from it.”

Swanson School of Engineering Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering 940 Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261 Return Service Requested

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Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, presented her Provost’s Inaugural Lecture as the new John A. Swanson Chair in Engineering on September 13, recognizing her contributions to the fields of chemical engineering and computational modeling. Her research involves developing theoretical and computational models to capture the behavior of polymeric materials, nanocomposites and multi-component fluids, with funding awarded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation. In addition to her numerous awards and recognition, she is the first woman to receive the prestigious American Physical Society Polymer Physics Prize (2016).

Pictured from left to right are Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher, Dr. Balazs, Provost Ann Cudd, and Swanson School Dean James Martin II. UNIVERSI T Y OF PI T T SBURGH | SWANS O N S C H O O L O F EN G I N EER I N G | C H EM E N EW S | FA LL 2018