2. NATO Partners

1. NON – NATO Partners
3. NATO Consultant
4. Brief CV of the Key Participants

Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical Engineering, established in 1901, was among the first chemical engineering programs in USA. It has remained a leader. Its undergraduate program is one of the largest in the USA. Ranking from its peers continually place the graduate program among the best in the USA, according to U.S. News and World Report, and School is among the top producers of MS and PhD degree in the USA.

Prof. M. G. White is Director of Focused Research Program in Surface Science and Catalysis. This Program has a complete testing laboratory available for team use to characterize for chemical reactivity small amounts of substances (1-10g). Included in this space are four separate laboratory rooms (total area = 2500 ft²) which have three, batch, stirred autoclave reactors (two by Parr Instruments and one by Autoclave Engineers) and five other batch, stirred autoclaves that may be used to synthesize zeolites. Two tubular flow reactors are available for reactions up to 400 psig and 500 C. The analytical facilities servicing these reactors are three gas chromatographs. One is a Hewlett Packard 5982 Series-II plus device attached to a MS (model 5792). This device is equipped to conduct auto-sampling of liquid samples (up to 100 at a time), and for auto-sampling of gas samples from a flowing reactor effluent. The gas phase reactors may be set up to conduct catalyst life studies for period of time up to a week. During this time effluent may be sampled at intervals as short as 30 minutes. A second GC, Gow-Mac Series 600, is equipped with a thermal conductivity detector and can be used as a micro-catalytic reactor for screening catalyst. A third GC, Gow-Mac is dedicated for use with TPR and TPD. We have a high-pressure liquid chromatograph (HPLC, Buck Scientific, BLC-20) and an IR Spectrometer (Buck Scientific, Model 500) . Two other instruments are used for characterizing thin films on metal substances: quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and surface plasmon resonance (SPR, Texas Instruments) spectrometer. Shlenk-line technology is available to synthesize air/water sensitive compounds. Using this equipment, the team has successfully completed syntheses that demand a high degree of controlled atmospheres. Also, team is equipped to synthesize zeolites for use as catalysts or adsorbents. Moreover, the team can prepare metal/zeolites by ion exchange or impregnation techniques using aqueous or non-aqueous solvents.

Available on campus for team use is a Micromeritics Autosorb N2 adsorption analyzer. With this device team may determine surface area and pore size distributions. A thermal gravimetric device is also available for team use to describe acid site density by selective chemisorption of an appropriate base such as iso-propyl amine. X-Ray diffraction equipment is available to confirm the structure and phases of the solids as well as NMR facilities for liquid and solid state analyses (Bruker DRX 500). Should the team require infrared (Nicolet 750 MAGNA) and Raman (Nicolet 950) analyses of solids, a facility is available for team use at the Clark Atlanta University, Department of Chemistry. Also available on campus are an X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS) and electron paramagnetic resonance instrument (EPR).

The presence of university teaching in the town of Parma is historically documented from the IX century. It is in 1816 that Napoleon’s wife, Marie-Louise Hapsburg, founded the Faculty of Pharmacy, the first official presence of chemistry studies. The Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry was born in 1993 from the fusion of the oldest Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry and the younger Institute of Physical Chemistry and Institute of Structures. The department is part of the Faculty of Sciences together with the Dept. of Organic and Industrial Chemistry. Both are situated in the same building with several common facilities. The laboratory of Prof. Predieri group (http://www.chim.unipr.it/predieri.html) is equipped with vacuum lines and reaction glassware for organometallic synthesis. Small autoclaves, from 50 mL to 1 L, are used for batch catalytic reactions under pressure. The group has research experience in sol-gel preparation of inorganic-organic hybrid materials able to support metal complexes, to be used as catalysts. Also silica-encapsulated metal particles and mixed-metal oxides obtained by non-hydrolytic sol-gel processes have been studied. Moreover, another important topic of our scientific work is the synthesis and characterization of organometallic compounds with new molecular architectures (mainly in the field of selenido-carbonyl transition metal clusters).

The instrumentation at our disposal (to be used directly in our building by members of our group) are: UV spectrophotometer; two Nicolet FT-IR spectrometers, one equipped with diffuse reflectance and high pressure and temperature environmental chamber, the other equipped with FAR-IR and Continuum Microscope; a Micromeritics apparatus for surface area and gas adsorption measurements. Other instruments, which are routinely used by our group, are: Bruker NMR instruments (two 300 MHz for proton and carbon nuclei, a 400 MHz for multinuclear measurements); a JEOL SEM microscope equipped with EDX microanalysis; a Nanoscope AFM microscope. Common services are: CHNS-O elemental analysis, mass spectroscopy, and X-Ray single crystal and powder diffraction. For advanced structural studies (SANS) access at the European Neutron Sources is possible through collaborators at the department of Physics of our Faculty and collaborators at the CNR in Rome can do XPS measurements.