2017 Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering Lecture

Christopher W. Jones, Love Family Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Associate Vice-President for Research, Georgia Institute of Technology will be presenting the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering Lecture, October 31, 2017.

Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering:

In honor of one of the chemical engineering profession’s most influential leaders and one of the great fluid dynamacists of the 20th century, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has renamed the Professional Progress Award the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering.

This award is endowed by the AIChE Foundation thanks to the generous support of the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering.



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Refreshments will be served.

Recognizes outstanding progress in the field of chemical engineering. The awardee will have made a significant contribution to the science of chemical engineering through one of the following means:

• A theoretical discovery or development of a new principle in the chemical engineering field.
• Development of a new process or product in the chemical engineering field.
• An invention or development of new equipment in the chemical engineering field.
• Distinguished service rendered to the field or profession of chemical engineering.

Christopher W. Jones, winner of the 2016 Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering and Love Family Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Associate Vice-President for Research, Georgia Institute of Technology will be presenting the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering Lecture.

Engineering Amine-Modified Silicates for CO₂ Separations and Catalysis

Christopher W. Jones, Love Family Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Associate Vice-President for Research, Georgia Institute of Technology

Worldwide energy demand is projected to grow strongly in the coming decades, with most of the growth in developing countries.  Even with unprecedented growth rates in the development of renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and bioenergy, the world will continue to rely on fossil fuels as a predominant energy source for at least the next several decades.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that anthropogenic CO₂ has contributed measurably to climate change over the course of the last century.  To this end, there is growing interest in new technologies that might allow continued use of fossil fuels without drastically increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations beyond currently projected levels.  In this lecture, I will describe the design and synthesis, characterization and application of new aminosilica materials that we have developed as cornerstones of new technologies for the removal of CO₂ from dilute gas streams.  These chemisorbents efficiently remove CO₂ from simulated flue gas streams, and the CO₂ capacities are actually enhanced by the presence of water, unlike in the case of physisorbents such as zeolites.  Interestingly, the heat of adsorption for these sorbents is sufficiently high that the sorbents are also capable of capturing CO₂ from extremely dilute gas streams, such as the ambient air.  Indeed, our oxide-supported amine adsorbents are quite efficient at the direct “air capture” of CO₂ and we will describe our investigations into development of new “air capture” technologies as well.  Finally, the amine-modified silica materials are known to be efficient catalysts in coupling reactions important in organic synthesis, such as aldol and nitroaldol condensations.  Inspired by biological catalysts that make and break bonds using cooperative organocatalytic sites, chemocatalysts designed to promote cooperativity between amines and weakly acidic sites are shown to be highly effective catalysts. Catalyst design elements that strongly impact kinetic cooperativity will be presented.

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