Dr. Roger D. Whitley is a Senior Engineering Associate – Research at Air Products. He earned his bachelor’s degree at N. C. State University and his Ph.D. at Purdue University, both in Chemical Engineering. He joined Air Products in 1991, and during his 33-year career, Dr. Whitley has delivered a sustained record of contributions to separation technology. Notable accomplishments include: (1) contributed to the development of new adsorbent compositions and structures. Led teams to scale-up and commercialize new adsorbents, including international collaboration with various universities, institutes, and vendors; (2) interfaced with sales, commercial, and engineering stakeholders to develop industrial product offerings for producing oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and xenon by adsorption processes; (3) led projects for development and optimization of radial flow adsorption vessels, including analysis of associated internals for flow distribution and adsorbent dense loading methods; (4) managed a research group for the development of a portable medical oxygen concentrator (PMOC). Activities included adsorbent development, process optimization, rotary valve hardware development, operating software coding, and system integration. He interfaced with commercial leaders and external customers to define product needs and assess commercial potential; (5) developed ion exchange processes for electronics solutions, purification and drying systems for electronics and chemicals groups, and new adsorbents for the packaged
gases group. Dr. Whitley is a named inventor on 36 patent families and an author on more than 20 academic publications and 30 presentations. He is an AIChE Fellow and has served as a Director and then Chair of Separations Division. He has also served as a chair of the Adsorption and Ion Exchange
area of the Separations Division. Additionally, he is a Fellow of the International Adsorption Society and a registered U. S. Patent Agent.