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Poster Awards for Vanous and Newbloom

Newbloom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the 2013 AICHE Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco, CA, two Chemical Engineering graduate students took top honors in their respective poster sessions.

PhD student Greg Newbloom, working in the Pozzo research group, won the Soft Matter Award in the MESD Poster Session for his poster titled "Controlled Gelation of Poly(3-alkylthiophene)s in Bulk and Thin Film Environments Using Low Volatility Solvent/Non-Solvent Mixtures."

2nd-year PhD student Kayla Vanous, working in the Resende (BSE) and Pfaendtner research groups, took top prize at the AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division Graduate Student Poster competition with her poster titled "Conversion of Supercritical Bioethanol into Hydrocarbons over H-ZSM-5 Zeolite."

Vanous' research focuses on the direct conversion of lignocellulosic-based bioethanol into the hydrocarbon mixtures that comprise gasoline, otherwise known as the ethanol-to-gasoline, or ETG, process. ETG is a proposed alternative route to conventional corn-based ethanol production and ethanol-gasoline fuel blending. One of her main research goals is to investigate the conditions and mechanisms that result in carbonaceous film growth on catalysts in order to understand ETG coke deposition, which leads to catalyst deactivation, and more fundamentally, catalyst fouling in general. Supercritical ethanol conditions are being investigated as a potential solution to ETG coke formation and deposition.

At this year's poster competition a new dual-format presentation process was employed to facilitate the judging of the posters: competitors, including Vanous, gave an 8-minute electronic poster (Powerpoint) presentation, at a designated poster kiosk during the poster session.

Vanous enjoyed herself, too!  "My experience at AIChE, the first conference I have been to as a graduate student, was a very positive one. It gave me invaluable opportunities to discuss my research ideas with both academic and industry experts in chemical engineering. The many innovative ideas and great talks that I heard while at the conference were very inspiring."