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 850 peer-reviewed publications [3] [ failed verification ] that have been cited by over 56,000 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, acylium ions RCO+, and vinyl C
2H+
3 cations.

<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.

<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> Economic theory

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> Superacid system prepared from a Brønsted and a Lewis superacid

Magic acid is a superacid consisting of a mixture, most commonly in a 1:1 molar ratio, of fluorosulfuric acid and antimony pentafluoride. This conjugate Brønsted–Lewis superacid system was developed in the 1960s by Ronald Gillespie and his team at McMaster University, and has been used by George Olah to stabilise 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.

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

Fluorosulfuric 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.

The nitrosonium ion is NO+, in which the nitrogen atom is bonded to an oxygen atom with a bond order of 3, and the overall diatomic species bears a positive charge. It can be viewed as nitric oxide with one electron removed. This ion is usually obtained as the following salts: NOClO4, NOSO4H (nitrosylsulfuric acid, more descriptively written ONSO3OH) and NOBF4. The ClO−4 and BF−4 salts are slightly soluble in acetonitrile CH3CN. NOBF4 can be purified by sublimation at 200–250 °C and 0.01 mmHg (1.3 Pa).

<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.

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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.
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