G. K. Surya Prakash

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G. K. Surya Prakash (born 1953) is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and holder of the George A. and Judith A. Olah Nobel Laureate Chair in Hydrocarbon Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southern California. He serves as the Director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, where he maintains his prominent research lab. He also served as the Chairman of the Chemistry Department for four years between 2017 and 2021. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) from Bangalore University in 1972, a M.Sc. from IIT Madras in 1974 and a Ph.D. from University of Southern California in 1978 under the direction of George Olah, where he worked on characterizing stable carbocations in superacids. [1] He also sits on several editorial boards of major scientific journals. [2]

Contents

Research

Dr. Prakash is a prolific researcher with over 845 peer-reviewed publications [3] [ failed verification ] that have been cited by over 52,000 times. [4] and co-author of many edited books and monographs. He also holds ~120 patents and has been generating headlines as a co-proponent of the methanol economy concept alongside the late Nobel Laureate George Olah. The Methanol Economy aims to capture and recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere leading to convenient drop-in fuels and chemical feedstocks to replace fossil fuels. He co-developed the Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) with collaborators from NASA-JPL. He introduced and developed trifluoromethyltrimethylsilane as a trifluoromethylating reagent in organic chemistry and it is sometimes referred to as the Ruppert-Prakash reagent. His group's current research interests cover a wide range of subjects in the area of selective fluorinations, fluoroalkylations, oxidations, energetic materials, reductions, stereoselective reactions, electrochemical synthesis, hydrocarbon activation and isomerization, anthropogenic CO2 based fuels and feed-stocks, direct oxidation fuel cells, lithium ion battery electrolytes, iron batteries, flow batteries, electrochemistry, polymer chemistry, superacid catalyzed reactions, stable carbocation chemistry, application of ab initio and DFT theory and NMR chemical shift calculations. [1] His coauthored book with G. A.Olah and A. Goeppert on solving the carbon conundrum, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy (translated into Chinese, Swedish, Hungarian, Japanese and Russian), Wiley VCH (published in three editions, 2006, 2009 and 2018) is getting increasing attention and adoption world-wide.

Awards

Dr. Prakash has received many awards and accolades. He is a recipient of three American Chemical Society National Awards (2004, 2006, and 2018) and in 2011 was elected a fellow of the European Academy of Sciences for his contribution towards the methanol economy. He co-shared (with G. A. Olah) the $1M Samson Prime Minister's Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation from the State of Israel in 2013. His work in fluorine chemistry was recognized by the Henri Moissan Prize from the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie in France in 2015.

List of major awards and recognition

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbocation</span> Ion with a positively charged carbon atom

A carbocation is an ion with a positively charged carbon atom. Among the simplest examples are the methenium CH+
3
, methanium CH+
5
and vinyl C
2
H+
3
cations. Occasionally, carbocations that bear more than one positively charged carbon atom are also encountered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Andrew Olah</span> Hungarian-American chemist (1927–2017)

George Andrew Olah was a Hungarian-American chemist. His research involved the generation and reactivity of carbocations via superacids. For this research, Olah was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994 "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry." He was also awarded the Priestley Medal, the highest honor granted by the American Chemical Society and F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society in 1996.

Methanol fuel is an alternative biofuel for internal combustion and other engines, either in combination with gasoline or independently. Methanol (CH3OH) is less expensive to produce sustainably than ethanol fuel, although it produces more toxic effects than ethanol and has lower energy density than gasoline. Methanol is safer for the environment than gasoline, is an anti-freeze agent, prevents dirt and grime buildup within the engine, has a higher flashpoint in case of fire, and produces horsepower equivalent to that of super high-octane gasoline. It can readily be used in most modern engines with a simple software setting tweak and occasionally a change in a cheap fuel seal or line. To prevent vapor lock in any possible circumstances due to being a simple, pure fuel, a small percentage of other fuel or certain additives can be included. Methanol (a methyl group linked to a hydroxyl group) may be made from fossil fuels or renewable resources, in particular natural gas and coal, or biomass respectively. In the case of the latter, it can be synthesized from CO2 (carbon dioxide) and hydrogen. The vast majority of methanol produced globally is currently made with gas and coal. However, projects, investments, and the production of green-methanol has risen steadily into 2023. Methanol fuel is currently used by racing cars in many countries and has seen increasing adoption by the maritime industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Moissan</span> French chemist and pharmacist (1852–1907)

Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan was a French chemist and pharmacist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds. Moissan was one of the original members of the International Atomic Weights Committee.

In chemistry, a superacid (according to the original definition) is an acid with an acidity greater than that of 100% pure sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which has a Hammett acidity function (H0) of −12. According to the modern definition, a superacid is a medium in which the chemical potential of the proton is higher than in pure sulfuric acid. Commercially available superacids include trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (CF3SO3H), also known as triflic acid, and fluorosulfuric acid (HSO3F), both of which are about a thousand times stronger (i.e. have more negative H0 values) than sulfuric acid. Most strong superacids are prepared by the combination of a strong Lewis acid and a strong Brønsted acid. A strong superacid of this kind is fluoroantimonic acid. Another group of superacids, the carborane acid group, contains some of the strongest known acids. Finally, when treated with anhydrous acid, zeolites (microporous aluminosilicate minerals) will contain superacidic sites within their pores. These materials are used on massive scale by the petrochemical industry in the upgrading of hydrocarbons to make fuels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Methanol economy</span>

The methanol economy is a suggested future economy in which methanol and dimethyl ether replace fossil fuels as a means of energy storage, ground transportation fuel, and raw material for synthetic hydrocarbons and their products. It offers an alternative to the proposed hydrogen economy or ethanol economy, although these concepts are not exclusive. Methanol can be produced from a variety of sources including fossil fuels as well as agricultural products and municipal waste, wood and varied biomass. It can also be made from chemical recycling of carbon dioxide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magic acid</span> Chemical compound

Magic acid (FSO3H·SbF5) is a superacid consisting of a mixture, most commonly in a 1:1 molar ratio, of fluorosulfuric acid (HSO3F) and antimony pentafluoride (SbF5). This conjugate Brønsted–Lewis superacid system was developed in the 1960s by the George Olah lab at Case Western Reserve University, and has been used to stabilize carbocations and hypercoordinated carbonium ions in liquid media. Magic acid and other superacids are also used to catalyze isomerization of saturated hydrocarbons, and have been shown to protonate even weak bases, including methane, xenon, halogens, and molecular hydrogen.

Fluoroform, or trifluoromethane, is the chemical compound with the formula CHF3. It is a hydrofluorocarbon as well as being apart of the haloforms, a class of compounds with the formula CHX3 with C3v symmetry. Fluoroform is used in diverse applications in organic synthesis. It is not an ozone depleter but is a greenhouse gas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fluorosulfuric acid</span> Chemical compound

Fluorosulfuric acid (IUPAC name: sulfurofluoridic acid) is the inorganic compound with the chemical formula HSO3F. It is one of the strongest acids commercially available. It is a tetrahedral molecule and is closely related to sulfuric acid, H2SO4, substituting a fluorine atom for one of the hydroxyl groups. It is a colourless liquid, although commercial samples are often yellow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fluoroantimonic acid</span> Chemical compound

Fluoroantimonic acid is a mixture of hydrogen fluoride and antimony penta­fluoride, containing various cations and anions. This mixture is a superacid that, in terms of corrosiveness, is trillions of times stronger than pure sulfuric acid when measured by its Hammett acidity function. It even protonates some hydro­carbons to afford pentacoordinate carbo­cations. Like its precursor hydrogen fluoride, it attacks glass, but can be stored in containers lined with PTFE (Teflon) or PFA.

Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute is on the campus of the University of Southern California. G. K. Surya Prakash serves as the Director and holds the George A. and Judith A. Olah Nobel Laureate Chair of Chemistry.

William Taylor Miller was an American professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University. His experimental research included investigations into the mechanism of addition of halogens, especially fluorine, to hydrocarbons. His work focused primarily on the physical and chemical properties of fluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons, and the synthesis of novel electrophilic reagents.

Carbon Recycling International (CRI) is an Icelandic limited liability company which has developed a technology designed to produce renewable methanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, using water electrolysis or, alternatively, hydrogen captured from industrial waste gases. The technology is trademarked by CRI as Emissions-to-Liquids (ETL) and the renewable methanol produced by CRI is trademarked as Vulcanol. In 2011 CRI became the first company to produce and sell liquid renewable transport fuel produced using only carbon dioxide, water and electricity from renewable sources.

Carbon-neutral fuel is fuel which produces no net-greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint. In practice, this usually means fuels that are made using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock. Proposed carbon-neutral fuels can broadly be grouped into synthetic fuels, which are made by chemically hydrogenating carbon dioxide, and biofuels, which are produced using natural CO2-consuming processes like photosynthesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl O. Christe</span> German inorganic chemist

Karl Otto Christe is an inorganic chemist. He is the best reference in respectful handling of a huge number of extremely reactive components and his extensive experience in fluorine chemistry earned him the title of 'The Fluorine God'. His research covers fluorine chemistry of nitrogen and halogens and the synthesis of new energetic materials.

The Tolman Medal is awarded each year by the Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society (SCALACS) for outstanding contributions to chemistry which include contributions in areas of fundamental studies, chemical technology, and significant contributions to chemical education or outstanding leadership in science on a national level. To be eligible for the Medal, the recipient must have accomplished the majority of his or her work while resident in Southern California.

Andrzej Wieckowski American chemistry professor (1945–2019)

Andrzej Wieckowski was an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the North American Editor of Electrochimica Acta. He is known for his spectroscopic investigations of electrocatalysis in fuel cells and co-inventing of the direct formic acid fuel cell (DFAFC). He authored more than 300 publications, has been cited over 13,000 times and has an h-index 60. He was appointed fellow of the Electrochemical Society in 2007 and fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry in 2009. He was awarded the US Department of Energy Prize for outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Materials Chemistry in 1992, the ISE Jacques Tacussel Prize in 1998, the ECS David. C. Graham Award in 2003, and the ISE Gold Medal in 2007.

Herman Pines was a Russian Empire-born American chemist. Born in Łódź—then part of the Russian Empire—he left his hometown as a young man as Jewish quotas and other anti-Jewish practices prevented Jewish students from attending university. After earning a degree in chemical engineering at the École Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon in France, he worked at Universal Oil Products from 1930 to 1952. Pines also worked at Northwestern University beginning in 1941, and served from 1953–1970 as the Ipatieff Research Professor of Chemistry and director of the Ipatieff High Pressure and Catalytic Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jingguang Chen</span> Chinese-American chemical engineer

Jingguang Chen is a Chinese-American chemical engineer. He is the Thayer Lindsley Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, with a joint appointment as Senior Chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. Over the course of his career Chen has made significant contributions to the fundamental understanding and use of novel materials for catalytic and electrocatalytic applications, including research into the development of bimetallic and transition metal carbide catalysts.

References

  1. 1 2 "Department of Chemistry". chem.usc.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-19.
  2. 1 2 "G. K SURYA PRAKASH | CO2 Forum". co2forum.cpe.fr (in French). Retrieved 2018-09-19.
  3. "Surya Prakash". www.journals.elsevier.com. Retrieved 2018-09-19.
  4. "Surya Prakash - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2022-04-06.