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Riverside, Calif., chemist wins national award for petroleum research

Chemist Francisco Zaera of Riverside, Calif., will be honored April 3 by the world's largest scientific society for his insights into understanding how catalysts work in the oil industry, including the steps by which they increase octane levels. He will receive the 2001 George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry from the American Chemical Society at its 221st national meeting in San Diego.

In the petroleum industry, catalysts orchestrate reactions such as cracking large chains of hydrocarbons into smaller ones. Later, they help turn those products into plastics, pharmaceuticals and other petroleum-based chemicals.

However, finding the right catalyst for a particular reaction is now "largely a process of trial and error," said Zaera, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside. "The long-term goal is to develop enough knowledge to tailor-make catalysts for processes to manufacture whatever society needs."

His research in general involves solid catalysts, over which liquid or gaseous reactants pass over and react, as in an automobile's catalytic converter.

One of Zaera's projects has been learning the step-by-step mechanism by which a catalyst can increase the octane rating of the gasoline fraction of petroleum. "The hydrocarbons can actually follow many, many reactions on the catalyst," he said. "We don't yet understand how subtle changes in the catalyst can cause it to behave very differently."

His studies suggest that it's the point when - and where - the catalyst removes hydrogen from the gasoline molecules that ultimately determines what the products will be.

Zaera said growing up in his native Venezuela influenced his decision to become a chemist. "The oil industry is very important to Venezuela, and I wanted to get in a field where I could make a difference," he explained.

The physical chemist received his undergraduate degree from Simon Bolivar University in Caracas in 1979 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984. He is a member of the ACS division of colloid and surface chemistry.

The ACS George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry is sponsored by the George A. Olah Endowment.

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