Chemical Engineering October 2011 - 19

Kirkpatrick Award
CompaCt ReaCtoRs
Boost pRoduCtivity
Scott Jenkins
Velocys' microchannel
reactors for production
of synthetic fuels wins
2011 Kirkpatrick Award
V
elocys Inc. (Plain City, Ohio;
www.velocys.com), a part of the
Oxford Catalyst Group (Abingdon,
U.K.; www.oxfordcatalysts.
com), has been awarded the Kirkpatrick
Award for Chemical Engineering
Achievement from Chemical Engineering.
The company's winning technology
features microchannel reactors
for producing synthetic fuels. The
award was announced at a reception
September 12 in Houston. The reception
kicked-off the ChemInnovations
2011 Conference and Expo, held at the
George R. Brown Convention Center.
Velocys commercial director Jeff McDaniel
accepted the award on the company's
behalf. " It's an honor to receive
the award, " said McDaniel, explaining
that a great deal of work by many
people had gone into the technology,
which allows faster processing in a
range of reactions.
The Velocys technology was selected
from a group of four award finalists,
who were also honored at the reception.
With its win, Velocys joins a distinguished
group of companies to have
received the biennial award, which
was first handed out by the magazine
in 1933. Past winners include BOC
Group's low-temperature NOx absorption
out of fluegases (2001), Amoco
Chemical's anaerobic treatment of
process wastewater (1991), Tennessee
Eastman Co.'s coal-based acetic anhydride
(1985), DuPont's hollow-fiber
reverse osmosis (1971), Dow Corning's
Figure 1. Velocys commercial director Jeff McDaniel (middle) accepted the 2011
Kirkpatrick Award from CE managing editor Dorothy Lozowski (left) and CE editor-inchief
Rebekkah Marshall (right) at a September 12 reception in Houston
silicone products (1955), Dow Chemical's
magnesium from seawater (1941)
and Carbide & Carbon Chemical's petrochemical
syntheses (1933).
The Kirkpatrick Award aims to
honor the most noteworthy chemical
engineering technology commercialized
anywhere in the world during
2009 or 2010. Award nominations are
collected and validated by the Kirkpatrick
Award Committee Secretary,
Rebekkah Marshall, who is Chemical
Engineering's editor-in-chief. Once it
is verified that the nominee's technologies
have actually been commercialized
during the appropriate time period,
they are submitted to a board of
judges. The Kirkpatrick Award judges
are all senior professors and department
heads at accredited university
chemical engineering departments in
the U.S. and Europe, who are recruited
to evaluate and rank the nominees
based on a set of criteria that includes
the technology's novelty, the difficulty
of the chemical engineering problems
solved, and the overall engineering
excellence. The secretary tabulates
the judges' scores to arrive at the winning
technology.
Microchannel reactors
The estimated ten trillion cubic feet of
associated natural gas from oil wells
that is either flared or reinjected yearly
offers a vast market opportunity. Velocys
and its parent company Oxford
Catalysts has applied its microchannel-technology
patent portfolio to that
opportunity by developing a method for
converting natural gas to liquid synthetic
fuels. The microchannel technology
could also be applied to biomassto-liquids
(BTL) and coal-to-liquids
(CTL) technology. The reactors are designed
for steam-methane reforming
(SMR) of natural gas to form synthesis
gas, followed by Fischer-Tropsch (F-T)
synthesis to generate liquid fuels. The
microchannel reactors are loaded with
catalysts specially designed for microchannel
use by Oxford.
Reactors using microchannel technology
have parallel arrays of channels
ChemiCal engineering www.Che.Com oCtober 2011 19
http://www.velocys.com http://www.oxfordcatalysts http://www.Che.Com
Chemical Engineering October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering October 2011
