(337a) Some Industrial Problems Connected to the Research of Guy Marin

Early in my career, I learned that before starting any major research project it was good to check if certain giants of the field had already worked in the area. Depending on the topic, these names included: Lord Rayleigh, G.I. Taylor, Aris, Amundson, H.C. Brown, George Olah, Eli Ruckenstein, Zeldovich, Kolmogorov, Dan Luss, Wicke, and Landau. The work of these scientists hit so many subjects with so much breadth and depth, that it was always worth checking to see if their fingerprints were already there. By 2000, I added Guy Marin to the list. His state-of-the-art pilot-scale steam cracker is the center of the universe for pyrolysis research. His work on improved coil designs for enhanced heat transfer, anti-coking coatings, and novel materials are all being investigated for practical use in industry. His micro-kinetic model of hydrocarbon pyrolysis is routinely used in SABIC and other companies. Concerning the fundamentals of chemical reactions he has studied the kinetics, mechanism, and thermochemistry of almost every type of reaction of industrial importance; polymerization, hydrocarbon pyrolysis, coke formation, reforming, CO2 conversion, oxidative coupling of methane, alkylation, hydrocracking, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, photo-catalysis; the list goes on and on. Similarly, he has left almost no chemical reactor type untouched: fluidized bed, fixed bed, cracking furnace, reformer, catalytic converter, gas-solid vortex reactor, and chemical looping. Now at the age of 65, he has touched many more! I will briefly introduce a few industrially relevant topics that Guy has touched, but not so much that all the work is finished