Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Early 1950s: Treating exhaust gases from internal combustion engines, founds — and
begins commercial operations at Yardley, Pennsylvania. Houdry is later inducted into
the Inventor's Hall of Fame.
June 11, 1949: First meeting of organization that became the Catalysis Club of
Philadelphia was held at the University of Pennsylvania. Paper were presented by R.
C. Hansford (Mobil), A. G. Oblad (Houdry), A. V. Grosse (Temple U), T. I. Taylor
(Columbia U.) and K. A. Krieger (U. Pennsylvania). A. Farkas, organizer of this
symposium, was selected chairman of a committee to form a permanent organization.
December 1949: Prof. Paul Emmett presented a lecture at Temple University and
afterwards the Catalysis Club of Philadelphia was officially formed, electing A.
Farkas chairman and A. Oblad as Secretary-Treasurer. Almost one hundred signed up
as members.
1949: P. W. Selwood published his first paper on nuclear induction and begins a series
of classic publications on the application of magnetic techniques in catalysis. The
results are summarized in his book [P. W. Selwood, "Adsorption and Collective
Paramagnetism," Academic Press, 1962.]
John Turkevich, H. H. Hubbell and James Hillier, Electron microscopy and small
angle X-ray scattering.
1950: Linear relationship between quinoline chemisorption and catalytic activity for
gasoil cracking - G. A. Mills, E. R. Boedeker and A. G. Oblad, JACS, 72, 1554
(1950).
1951: A. Wheeler defines role of diffusion in determining reaction rates and catalytic
selectivity - Advan. Catal., 3, 250-326 (1951).
1953: Karl Ziegler discovers a catalyst system for polymerizing ethylene at low
temperature and pressure to produce linear, crystalline polyethylene- Nobel Prize
awarded to Ziegler in 1963.
1954: "Beginning" of catalyst characterizations using instruments with i.r. spectra for
CO adsorption on copper (R. P. Eischens, W. A. Pliskin and S. A. Francis, J. Chem.
Phys, 22, 1786 (1954)). This pioneering work soon included approaches to
characterize active sites for adsorption on metal, metal oxide and acidic sites as well
as distinguishing Brønsted and Lewis acid sites.
1954: John P. Hogan and R. L. Banks, Phillips Petroleum, discovers chromia catalyst
for polyethylene production.
1954: B.F. Goodrich (S. E. Horne) and Gulf Oil announce use of Ziegler catalyst to
polymerize isoprene to duplicate natural rubber.
1956: Phillips Process - high pressure (500 psi) in hot solvent with supported chromia
catalyst did not, on the surface, look attractive compared to Ziegler-Natta; however,
engineering advances, cheap and high activity catalyst, and ever increasing scale
made the Phillips Process the world's leading source of polyethylene.
1956: First International Congress on Catalysis held in Philadelphia - more than 600
attendees. This has become an independent organization and the 11th ICC will be held
during 2000 in Granada, Spain.
1957: On June 18, Hercules opens the first Zigler catalyst based plant in the U.S.
1953 - 1959: Patents granted in these years led to the commercial production of three
significant linear polyolefins: high-density polyethylene (1955- 56 by Hoechst, W.R.
Grace, Hercules and Phillips), polypropylene (1957-8 by Hercules, Montecantini and
Hoechst) and stereo-specific rubbers (1958-9 by Goodrich-Gulf, Phillips and Shell).
1960: Completion of Sohio's acrylonitrile plant at Lima, Ohio, based upon catalyst
discovered by J. D. Idol.
1964: Olefin metathesis announced [R. L. Banks and G. C. Bailey, Ind. Eng. Chem,
Prod Res. Dev., 3 170 (1964)] commercialized in 1966.
1966: Introduction of concept of hard and soft acids and bases to catalysis (R. G.
Pearson, Science, 151, 172 (1966)).
1966: Development of a method to calculate the coordination numbers of surface
atoms in the stable forms of small metal particles (R. van Hardeveld and A. van
Montfoort, Surface Sci., 4, 396 (1966)).
1975: State of dispersion of small Pt and Pd metal particles in zeolites (P. Galleyot et.
al., J.Catal., 39, 334 (1975)).
1978: Discovery of the strong metal support interaction (SMSI) and its role in altering
the adsorptive properties of the metal function. (S. J. Tauster, S. C. Fung and R. L.
Garten, JACS, 100, 170 (1978)).
1980's: New catalytic technology commercialized in the U.S. during the 1980's (J.
Armor, Appl. Catal., 78, 141 (1991)).
1980's: Union Carbide and Shell develop the UNIPOL process for linear low-density
polyethylene, which allows precise control over the product's material properties. The
process was extended to polypropylene in 1985.
1982: Definition of Energy Profile for Ammonia Synthesis (G. Ertl in "Solid State
and Material Sci.", CRC Press, 1982, 349).
1982: The concept of transition state selectivity for zeolite catalysis introduced (W. O.
Haag, R. M. Lago and P. B. Weisz, J. Chem. Soc., Farad. Disc, 72, 317 (1982)).
1983: Enichen scientists report the use of titanium silicalite (TS-1) as a catalyst for
selective oxidations with aqueous hydrogen peroxide, including olefin epoxidation
(M. Taramasso, G. Pereyo and B. Natari, U.S. 4,410,501).
1994: Topics in Catalysis begins publication with Gabor Somorjai and Sir John
Thomas as Co-Editors.
1996: MagnaCat Process for separation and removing aged FCC catalyst operates at a
commercial scale.