US-South Africa Workshop: Catalysis Research, Pretoria, South Africa, June 2000

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

INT-0080301 Harold Kung This award supports the participation of 12 US scientists and engineers in a US-South Africa Workshop on Catalysis Research, scheduled for June 2000 in Pretoria, South Africa. The organizers are Harold H. Kung, Department of Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University, Neil Coville, Department of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Cyril O'Connor, Dean of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town, South Africa. The workshop will focus on technical discussions in order to identify potential collaborative research projects. Participants from both countries will be drawn from academia, government, and industry. The three primary themes of the workshop are selective oxidation catalysis, zeolite synthesis and analysis, and supported metal catalysis. Catalysis plays a central role in chemical manufacturing and energy conversion industries throughout the world. Catalysis has also found increasing applications to improve environmental quality. Although there are numerous ongoing collaborations between researchers in the United States and Europe and Japan, relatively few exist with Africa. The area of catalysis is particularly appropriate for US-South African collaboration. In some selected heterogeneous catalytic technologies, South Africa is a world leader. South Africa has the only industrial-scale Fischer-Tropsch process. Further collaborative activity among US and South African researchers is expected to result from this workshop. This award is supported jointly by the Division of International Programs and the Division of Chemical and Transport Systems.