Description:

Dave Barton

Principal Research Scientist

Dow Chemical

Seminar Title: Industrial Catalyst Discoveries Enabling Development of New Routes to 'Old' Chemicals

Abstract: The use of solar technology has grown tremendously in recent years as the need for renewable energy sources increases. Concentrating solar power (CSP) represents a proven large-scale technology that uses parabolic trough technology, where solar energy is captured using mirrors that direct sunlight toward a collector containing a heat-transfer fluid (HTF). The equivalent of approximately 2 million homes are powered by CSP plants, corresponding to a savings of 2.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. However, the tremendous worldwide growth in CSP is threatened by a chronic shortage of the heat-transfer fluid used to capture the solar energy in CSP plants. The standard fluid utilized in essentially all parabolic trough CSP systems is the most thermally stable (up to 400°C) organic fluid available today and consists of a eutectic mixture of diphenyl oxide (DPO) and  biphenyl.  The only commercially viable route to produce CSP-grade DPO involves the gas-phase dehydration of phenol over a heterogeneous thorium oxide (thoria) catalyst. The thoria-catalyzed process was discovered over 100 years ago, yet remains state-of-the-art and represents by far the most efficient process developed to date. However, there are two major shortcomings that seriously hinder further global DPO capacity expansion: (1) the thoria catalyst is mildly radioactive and poses significant health and environmental risks; (2) purified thoria sources have been unavailable globally in recent years.

Recently, in an effort to develop a more sustainable process by inventing new catalysts to produce DPO, the research team in Core R&D at Dow Chemical made a serendipitous discovery of a novel nano-structured yttrium oxychloride catalyst with unprecedented activity.  This seminal discovery led to a new class of rare-earth catalysts for high-temperature dehydration reactions.  This seminar will describe the discovery, characterization of the unique structure, and modeling efforts to describe the mechanism of these reactions.  

Bio: David Barton is a Principal Research Scientist in the Inorganic Materials & Heterogeneous Catalysis Capability of Core R&D.  In this role, David is responsible for technical project leadership, developing and shaping new projects, and subject matter expert for commercial catalysts/processes. 

David joined Dow in 1998 in the Heterogeneous Catalysis organization. His work has focused on discovery of novel heterogeneous catalysts for the utilization of alternative feedstocks and environmentally benign processes including propylene epoxidation, methane activation, higher alcohol synthesis, propane dehydrogenation, phenol dehydration, and carbonylation reactions.   He is the recognized technical expert in fundamentals of catalyst synthesis, in-situ characterization, mechanistic studies, reactor design for catalyst evaluation, and catalyst scale-up. 

He is also a leader of external joint research collaborations with universities: UC-Berkeley, Univ of Minnesota, Northwestern Univ, and Georgia Tech; National Labs: National Renewable Energy Lab and Argonne National Lab; and catalyst vendors: Clariant and Evonik.  He has given invited lectures at universities (Univ of Wisc, Ohio State, Univ of Kansas, and Stevens Inst), the Gordon Research Conference for Catalysis (2012, 2016), and national/international conferences (Heraeus Lecture, ACS, AIChE and NACS).

David graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1993 with his B.S. Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Minnesota and his PhD Chemical Engineering degree from the University of California Berkeley.  He is the author of 19 US patents, 19 journal publications (>1800 citations), and >90 internal reports.

Hosted by Justin Notestein

Associate Professor

Chemical and Biological Engineering