Shown here is the winning team from Haldor Topsoe: Anders Bo Jensen, Product Line Director; Lars Pilsgaard Hansen, Principal Scientist; Per Zeuthen, Senior Director; Magnus Magnussen, Principal Scientist; Frank Bartnik Johansson, R&D Director (Source: Haldor Topsoe)
Chemical Engineering is pleased to announce that the winner of the 46th Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award is Haldor Topsoe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark), for its hydrotreating catalyst TK-6001 HySwell — an alumina-supported NiMo hydrotreating catalyst. NiMo catalysts are in demand for ultra-low-sulfur diesel and hydrocracker pretreatment. Until now, unsupported catalysts have been the only type that could meet the high activity needed for these applications. Topsoe has developed catalyst preparation techniques to produce a stable, supported catalyst that can be regenerated. Since it was launched in 2019, Topsoe has achieved 10 sales, with several already installed and performing excellently, says the company. More about this winning technology will be included in Chemical Engineering’s January 2022 issue.
We also congratulate the four honoree finalists for the 2021 Kirkpatrick Award: BQE Water, Dow Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure, Dow Deutschland and Sapphire on their innovative technologies.
The award
The 2021 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award recognizes and honors a highly noteworthy chemical-engineering technology commercialized in 2019 or 2020. The award is given once every two years and was initiated in 1933, when Chemical Engineering was known as Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering. Formerly known as the Award for Chemical Engineering Achievement, it was renamed the Kirkpatrick Award in 1959 in honor of Sidney Kirkpatrick, who served as the editorial director of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Week (1950–1959). Kirkpatrick was also a former president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and of the American Electrochemical Society.
Haldor Topsoe joins a long list of winning achievements that include: LanzaTech for Emissions-to-Ethanol Fermentation Technology (2019); CB&I and Albemarle Corp. for the AlkyClean process (2017); Dow Performance Plastics for Intune Olefin Block Copolymers (2015); and Genomatica for its process to produce bio-based butanediol (2013). The full list of past winners can be found at www.chemengonline. com/kirkpatrick-award.
The selection process
The winner of the award is selected through a process whereby current chairs of chemical engineering departments at U.S. and E.U. universities vote to select finalists from all of the qualified entries, and then a smaller group of professors select the final winner.