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by Gordon Ellis -
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AIChE’s Institute Award for Excellence in Industrial Gases Technology recognizes sustained contributions to the advancement of technology in the production, distribution, and application of industrial gases. The award is sponsored by Linde.
The 2022 Industrial Gases Award is being presented to Dr. Johannes G. Wijmans, President of Membrane Technology and Research, Inc., of Menlo Park, California. He is being honored for contributions to fundamental membrane transport research, membrane application research, and the development of the VaporSep process for hydrocarbon recovery in polyolefin manufacturing operations.
Dr. Wijmans and the other Institute and Board of Directors’ Award honorees will receive their prizes at the 2022 AIChE Annual Meeting, November 13–18 in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Science and engineering are human enterprises and therefore prone to mistakes, which may take a long time to reveal themselves. Thus, chemical engineers and engineers in general have a responsibility to ‘clean up our own messes’”
After received his master’s degree in chemical engineering, Hans Wijmans worked in the membrane research group of Professor C.A. Smolders at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, where he received his PhD in 1984. The subject of his thesis was the mechanism of formation of membranes and the concentration polarization phenomenon in ultrafiltration. He was awarded the 1984 Royal Dutch Shell Research Award for young scientists.
That same year, Wijmans joined Membrane Technology and Research, Inc. (MTR) in California, and he has spent his entire career at MTR. In 1988, he became MTR’s Director of Research, and in 2007 he was named the company’s president. By that time, MTR had grown from a research company into a company that designs, fabricates, and sells complete membrane separation systems to customers worldwide in the petrochemical, refining, and natural gas industries.
Wijmans served as President of the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) from 2003–2004, and he was a member of the NAMS Board of Directors from 1998–2006. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Membrane Science since 2009.
For more than ten years, he was a presenter of AIChE’s continuing education course “Industrial Separations Using Membranes.” He is named as an inventor or co-inventor on more than 50 U.S. patents, and his scientific publications have received more than 9,000 citations.
Working at the nexus of engineering and science, Wijmans says that he is motivated by the ability to use “our fundamental understanding of nature to develop concepts and products that improve lives.”
In reflecting on his profession, Wijmans says that “Science and engineering are human enterprises and therefore prone to mistakes, which may take a long time to reveal themselves. Thus, chemical engineers and engineers in general have a responsibility to ‘clean up our own messes’.”
Wijmans adds, “I have been impressed by the commitment of the new generations of chemical engineers — to accept that responsibility. I am confident that our discipline will continue to be a positive contributor to society.”
This fall, ChEnected is presenting profiles of all the 2022 Institute and Board of Directors’ Award recipients in this series. Visit ChEnected regularly to meet this year’s honorees.