Randy Vander Wal’s Work Contributed to NASA Group Achievement Award
On August 19, the NASA Alternative Aviation Fuel Experiment (AAFEX) Team received a NASA Group Achievement Award. Randy Vander Wal, associate professor in energy and mineral engineering, and his team supported the AAFEX field campaign studying alternative fuels and recently presented some of this work at the Fall 2010 American Chemical Society National Meeting.
The work of Vander Wal’s team, along with that of other teams, was recognized during the annual awards presentation at Langley “for outstanding achievement in establishing the impact of synthetic fuels on commercial aircraft engine and auxiliary power unit performance and pollutant emissions.”
The NASA Group Achievement Award is given to individuals for an outstanding group accomplishment that contributes substantially to NASA’s mission.
Zuleima Karpyn Awarded Wood Fellowship
Zuleima Karpyn has been selected as the Quentin E. and Louise L. Wood University Endowed Fellow in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering. The purpose of the fellowship is to provide additional funding to an outstanding member of the petroleum and natural gas engineering faculty in order to further his or her contributions to teaching, research, and public service.
Karpyn, an assistant professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering, is a recipient of the 2005 Penn State Wilson Research Initiation Grant, 2008 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award granted by the National Science Foundation, and the 2010 Penn State Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is also Associate Editor for the Society of Petroleum Engineers Journal, and an active member of the Society of Core Analysts and the American Geophysical Union. Her teaching and research interests include reservoir characterization and multiphase transport phenomena in porous media, including applications in reservoir engineering, underground hydrology, and environmental remediation.
Chunshan Song to Receive 2011 ACS Distinguished Researcher Award in Petroleum Chemistry
Chunshan Song, Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and director of the EMS Energy Institute in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences has been selected to receive the 2011 Distinguished Researcher Award from the Petroleum Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The award, which began in 2008, will recognize Song for his extensive original contributions to research in the petroleum chemistry field.
Song, who is also professor of chemical engineering (courtesy) and associate director of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment, is internationally known for his contributions to clean fuels, catalysis, and CO2 capture and utilization research. A prolific author of many high-impact publications, Song has delivered 45 plenary or keynote lectures at international conferences and over 210 invited lectures worldwide. He has over 180 refereed journal articles (which received over 5000 citations), 6 refereed books, 11 special journal issues, 22 patents and patent applications, and over 280 conference papers.
The ACS Petroleum Chemistry Division will hold an Award Symposium in Honor of Chunshan Song at the Fall 2011 ACS National Meeting in Denver, CO with around 30 invited lectures by selected researchers worldwide.
André Boehman Honored with Colwell Merit Award
André Boehman, professor of fuel science and materials science and engineering, was selected to receive the 2009 Arch T. Colwell Merit Award in recognition of a technical paper he co-authored, “An Experimental Investigation of the Origin of Increased NOx Emissions when Fueling a Heavy-Duty Compression-Ignition Engine with Soy Biodiesel.” The paper was published in the October 2009 issue of SAE International Journal of Fuels and Lubricants.
This award was established by Arch T. Colwell to recognize authors of outstanding papers presented at SAE meetings. Papers are judged for their value as contributions to existing knowledge of mobility engineering, and primarily with respect to their value as an original contribution to the subject matter. Award winning papers are selected from the many papers which were published for SAE meetings during 2009.
The paper’s lead author was Charles J. Mueller, Sandia National Laboratories. Co-authors included André Boehman and Glen C. Martin, Sandia National Laboratories. Previously, the paper received the 2009 SAE John Johnson Award for Outstanding Research in Diesel Engines.
Yongsheng Chen Receives DARPA Young Faculty Award
Yongsheng Chen, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering and the Virginia S. and Philip L. Walker, Jr. Faculty Fellow, has received a 2010 Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA Young Faculty Awards are given to junior faculty conducting research in the areas of the physical sciences, engineering and mathematics.
Two Faculty Members Elected to the 2010 Class of ACS Fellows
Two Institute faculty members, Harold Schobert and Chunshan Song, were elected to the 2010 class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Schobert, professor of fuel science in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and leading researcher in fuel chemistry in the EMS Energy Institute, came to Penn State in 1986 and served as the Fuel Science Program Chair from 1988 – 1996 and as the EMS Energy Institute Director from 1998 – 2006. He has made many important contributions to the advancement of fuel science and is internationally recognized as a leading researcher for his accomplishments in the areas of fuel chemistry, including molecular structures of coals, conversion of coals to synthetic fuels and to carbon materials, coal-based jet fuels, coal ash behavior, and CO2 capture.
Song is a Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science and the director of the EMS Energy Institute. In addition, he is a professor of chemical engineering and associate director of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment. Song has been member of the University faculty since 1989 and is internationally recognized for his original and innovative contributions to clean fuels, catalysis and CO2 capture and conversion research.
The ACS Fellows Program, created in 2008 to “recognize members for their contributions to the chemical sciences and outstanding service to ACS,” honored the inaugural class of 162 Fellows in 2009.
Students Place First in the Lockheed Martin Design Awards
By Anna Morrison, the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering
Two teams of energy engineering students walked away with top prizes at the Penn State College of Engineering's spring 2011 Design Project Showcase, held April 28, 2011, at the Bryce Jordan Center. The teams won first place Lockheed Martin Design Awards in the best project and best poster categories. "This is a tremendous accomplishment for the department and college coming from a new engineering program," said Yaw Yeboah, head of the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering.
The Design Project Showcase is an exhibit of engineering design projects created by students with the support of Penn State faculty members and industry sponsors. The projects allow students to display their solutions to problems posed by their industry sponsors. Both energy engineering teams entered the competition with their senior capstone design projects under the supervision of André Boehman, professor of fuel science and materials science and engineering.
Members of the team awarded best project included Natalie Keener, Adam Kimmerle, Liam O'Sullivan, Timothy Tomko, and Shaun Valentine. Sponsored by Daniel Yanchak of CONSOL Energy, Inc., they were tasked with devising a way to improve the industry method of recovering magnetite once it has been used in a slurry mix to separate mineral matter from coal. The energy engineering team designed and built a hydrocyclone enhanced with a four-pole AC electromagnet pulsing in the direction of the hydrocyclone flow. Initial testing showed the electromagnetically-enhanced hydrocyclone achieving a recovery efficiency of 96 percent. Much of the work for this project was completed at the EMS Energy Institute and Institute research staff Keith Miska and Ronald Wasco assisted the team with carrying out their design.
Members of the team awarded best poster included Andrew Eldridge, Erik Horn, Arwen Kandt, Roman Keniuk, Douglas Middleton, and Kaitlin Myers. Sponsored by Jason Steiner of Boeing, their project centered on the development of a mechanical energy storage system.
In all, there were 92 senior capstone design projects on display at the Design Showcase, with nearly 430 students in ten academic departments participating.
Song Receives Faculty Scholar Medal
Chunshan Song has been selected to receive a 2011 Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement. Established by the University in 1980, the award recognizes scholarly or creative excellence represented by a single contribution or a series of contributions around a coherent theme. The contribution may be original basic research in any area of science; may represent application of knowledge in the creation of a process or device useful to society; or may be in any area of the arts or humanities. A committee of faculty peers reviews nominations and selects candidates.
Song, Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, and the director of the EMS Energy Institute, was the engineering award recipient. He is regarded as an international leader in fuel science and catalysis. He is recognized for new approaches for removing sulfur by selective adsorption for ultra-clean liquid fuels, new approaches for designing sulfur and carbon resistant catalysts, shape-selective catalysis, novel molecular basket sorbents for CO2 capture, and a new process known as tri-forming of natural gas, using CO2 in flue gas as a method to produce industrially useful syngas. His contributions were described as “brilliant and prolific” by one of his external references.