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Photo at left: Dr. Joseph DeSimone (left) and Dr. Ruben Carbonell are co-directors of the new Science and Technology Center.
Photo at right: Dr. Ruben Carbonell and graduate student Karen Kennedy discuss a reactor to make polymers in carbon dioxide.
North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and two other universities have received a prestigious, multimillion-dollar grant to advance groundbreaking research into environmentally friendly solvents.
The National Science Board gave its approval July 30 to the National Science Foundation to establish the NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes. The director of the center will be Dr. Joseph M. DeSimone, William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill and Chemical Engineering at NC State. The center's co-director will be Dr. Ruben G. Carbonell, KoSa Professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University. The new center is one of five Science and Technology Centers to be authorized this year from a national pool of approximately 300 pre-proposals submitted more than one year ago.
The largest research grant ever received by any set of investigators in the UNC system, the $24 million center will be administered by the UNC-Chapel Hill in collaboration with NC State, North Carolina A&T State University and the University of Texas at Austin. The grant is an initial commitment of an estimated $18 million from NSF over five years with matching funds bringing the total to $24 million. The center has a potential duration of ten years that could result in a total of approximately $35-40 million from NSF.
The newly awarded STC will be the leading center in the world dedicated to discovering environmentally friendly processes using alternative solvents. It will build on the pioneering research done by center faculty in the Chemistry Department of UNC-Chapel Hill and the Departments of Chemical Engineering at NC State and UT-Austin. Its goal, according to DeSimone, is "to lead the environmental revolution" in significantly reducing the amount of aqueous and organic wastes generated in the manufacture of polymers and chemicals, in painting, cleaning and coating operations, and in the production of textiles and paper products. Currently more than 30 billion pounds of organic and halogenated solvents are used worldwide each year in manufacturing, and considerably more water is used and contaminated by related processes.
"With the establishment of this center, North Carolina could become the Silicon Valley of environmentally responsible science," said DeSimone. Carbon dioxide was long thought by scientists to be extremely limited as a solvent until Professor DeSimone and his students designed polymerization processes to make commodity plastics in it like Teflon®, Plexiglass® and polystyrene. An outgrowth of this research included the design of surfactants (detergents) for carbon dioxide by center faculty that enabled it to be a powerful solvent for many solvent- and water-intensive industries. Carbon dioxide has great advantages over other solvents: it's inexpensive, it's non-toxic and non-flammable, and it's accessible in many forms, gas and liquid.
According to Carbonell the new center is "a model of cooperation between the universities of the UNC system and UT-Austin and between industry and academe, as well as a model for the future of research in this country. Increasingly, innovative science requires multi-disciplinary teams that span a variety of institutions, academic and industrial. With this award we can be real leaders in the education of students in a multidisciplinary environment. This also includes students from K-12, who will benefit from the development of innovative teaching modules by center faculty." Carbonell said further that he expects that "carbon dioxide will become the solvent of the future," the main enabling ingredient in most high tech industries such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and biotechnology.
The William R. Kenan, Jr. Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science has offered strategic support over the last several years to the commercially viable technology platform based on carbon dioxide processes. As an extension of that strategic commitment, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Fund for Engineering, Technology and Science, which provides annual core funding to the Kenan Institute, made a special additional commitment of $500,000 as a component of the University's cost sharing contribution to this successful proposal. Dr. Harold B. Hopfenberg, Director of the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science has expressed his "enthusiastic commitment" to not only the viability of a variety of carbon dioxide based processes, but moreover, is "extremely supportive of Profs. Carbonell and DeSimone in their efforts to provide technical and administrative leadership in this important area".
The research into carbon dioxide by DeSimone and his students has already led to the commercialization of a novel process that utilizes carbon dioxide instead of organic solvents for dry cleaning. The resulting company, Micell Technologies, has generated a dry-cleaning franchise business called Hangers. The first few Hangers franchises utilizing the new technology have been in operation since October of 1998 in Wilmington and others will be in operation later this year in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Greensboro and Austin, the host cities of the academic institutions of this STC. In addition, the DuPont Corporation has begun construction of a new pilot plant in Fayetteville for the production of Teflon® polymer products in carbon dioxide, a technology licensed from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These systems have proven to be environmentally friendly, energy efficient, and to have significant performance advantages over competing processes using water or organic liquid solvents. There remain many other potential applications for carbon dioxide as a solvent, which have yet to be developed. The industrially funded Kenan Center for the Utilization of Carbon Dioxide in Manufacturing, another joint effort between UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State, will serve as a convenient industrial outreach component for the newly established Science and Technology Center.
For more information, contact Vicki Haithcock at 919-962-5468 (email: vph@email.unc.edu)
NSF Science and Technology Centers are among the largest and most prestigious research grants awarded by the Federal Government. The NSF established the STC Program in 1987, as part of President Reagan's State of the Union Address, to fund important basic research and education activities and to encourage technology transfer and innovative approaches to interdisciplinary problems. The centers have the opportunity to explore new areas and build bridges among disciplines, institutions, and other sectors. They offer the basic research community a significant mechanism to take a longer-term view of science and explore better and more effective ways to educate students. Specifically, center support enables academic research teams to:
Two previous competitions led to the establishment of 25 comprehensive Science and Technology Centers -- 11 in FY 1989 and 14 in FY 1991. Amounts of the awards for the new STCs range from the lowest ($16 million) to highest ($19.9 million) over five years.
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