1:49 p.m., Nov. 18, 2008---A massive change is taking place as America prepares to switch its energy and chemical raw materials needs from dwindling natural gas and oil to coal and other plentiful solid fossil fuels.

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While this sentence could easily be the lead to a 2008 news story, it was actually the introduction to a 1977 proposal that resulted in the establishment of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology (CCST) at the University of Delaware the following year.

The center celebrated its 30th anniversary at the 2008 CCST Research Review, held at UD's Clayton Hall Conference Center on Thursday, Oct. 23. The event brought together close to 100 researchers in catalytic science and technology to share their latest work.

As the center marked this milestone, CCST Director Dion Vlachos acknowledged in his welcoming remarks that while much has changed in the past three decades, the issue of energy, which drove the founding of CCST, has come full circle. “Once again, we're focusing on energy, but we're taking it in new directions,” he said, “with an emphasis on fuel cells and renewable energy systems.”

He also noted that instrumentation has become much more advanced since the 1970s. “We have a lot of computer horsepower now that we didn't have then,” he said, “and that has changed how we do research.”

The other major change he has observed is in scale: “Initially, our work focused on large systems,” he said. “Now, there's a trend toward miniaturization, with growing interest in nanotechnology.”

CCST was started with four faculty members--Jim Katzer, Bruce Gates, Al Stiles, and George Schuit--and has since grown to include 12 faculty from the Department of Chemical Engineering, which houses the center, as well as from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Gates, now Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California Davis, delivered the plenary lecture at the review. His talk, “A Molecular Foundation for Surface Catalysis: Supported Catalysts Synthesized from Organometallic Precursors,” focused on the results of recent work that had its roots in CCST.

One constant for CCST over the past three decades has been industrial involvement. The 1977 proposal referred to the most successful researchers in the field as being “those who were closely coupled to industrial colleagues who could translate the academic results into industrial practice.”

The center continues to have a strong connection to industrial practice, with ties forged through the Center's Industrial Sponsors Program, industrially supported grant and contract research, collaborative projects with industrial scientists and engineers, and industrial sabbaticals and exchanges of research personnel. “This continues to be an important avenue for funding, research ideas, education enhancement, and collaboration,” Vlachos said.

Mark Barteau, Robert L. Pigford Chair, former director of CCST and now UD's senior vice provost for research and strategic initiatives, has the longest tenure as a member of the center, including attending 27 previous annual research reviews.

“It has been fascinating to watch the evolution of the field, in many cases led by CCST researchers, over the past quarter-century,” Barteau says. “I think the most enduring legacy of the center is its commitment to high-quality, fundamental research, even at times when fundamental catalysis was not in vogue.”

Article by Diane Kukich