Facilities & Personnel

TAP (Temporal Analysis of Products) 

 The TAP-3 Reactor Research System at the Langmuir Research Institute

Originally a TAP-2 system, this research instrument operated at the Langmuir Research Institute was recently upgraded for unattended automatic control.  The upgrade features a new software suite with programmable experiment sequences and automatic configuration adjustment when switching between high pressure flow experiments and TAP pulse response experiments.  The automatic configuration feature has a system of sensors to detect and monitor the system configuration and prevents operator error that most often occurs when switching between vacuum and pressure modes.  These built in safety features also protect the instrument in the case of power, cooling water or compressed air failure.  In addition, the software features an advanced data analysis package for analyzing data collected from vacuum pulse response experiments.

The TAP-3 Research System operated by the Langmuir Research Institute is available for contract research studies.  Contact us to discuss a collaborative research program.
Personnel

Our team at the Langmuir Research Institute offers both experience and enthusiam:

Dr. Rebecca Fushimi, Executive Director

Dr. Fushimi was previously a graduate student of Drs. Gleaves and Yablonsky where she gained experience with a number of different heterogeneous chemical systems including selective oxidation of butane over VPO catalysts, mixed metal oxide selective oxidation catalyst (MoTeNbV), noble metal catalysis and zeolite chemistry.  In her work she developed a novel pulsed laser ablation module for atomic beam deposition of nanoscale concentration gradients on technical catalyst materials.  Working at Mithra Technologies, Dr. Fushimi led the development of data acquisition and control systems for TAP as well as software packages for TAP experiment analysis.

Dr. Anne Gaffney, Research Director

Dr. Gaffney has an extensive career in industry and has worked on numerous development projects in catalysis, clean energy and sustainability.  Her specialties include selective oxidation, materials synthesis and characterization, process chemistry and CO2 capture and utilization.  Her previous industrial experience includes Lummus Technology where she served as the Vice President of the Technology Development Center, the Rohm and Haas Company where she led a R&D team in the development of new catalytic routes to monomers and DuPont where she led programs in GTL, syngas production and conversion to chemicals, ODH of alkanes and fuel processing using combinatorial catalysis.

Dr. Pat Mills, Engineering Director

 Before being appointed as the Frank H. Dotterweich Chair and Professor of the Department of Chemical and Natural Gas Engineering at Texas A&M University, Dr. Mills enjoyed more than 25 years industrial experience in heterogeneous/homogeneous catalyst discovery, catalytic reaction engineering and process science research at DuPont, Monsanto and General Electric.  His research efforts include the design of various novel reactor systems as well as pilot plant development and operation for multiphase processes.  He has developed advanced multi-dimensional analytical methods for on-line compositional analysis of reaction mixtures from various multiphase reactor systems.

 

Dr. John Gleaves, Creative Director

With 13 years of industrial experience at Monsanto, Dr. Gleaves has been involved in heterogeneous catalysis research for 22 years as Associate Professor of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Washington University in Saint Louis.  His expertise includes the development of infrared and Raman spectroscopic techniques for industrial catalyst characterization, selective oxidation catalysis of hydrocarbons and the design of novel instrumentation to test scientific concepts.  Dr. Gleaves is the inventor of the TAP reactor system and developed the commercial TAP reactor system sold by Mithra Technologies.  Now more than 20 TAP systems are operating in industrial and academic laboratories around the world. 

Dr. Gregory Yablonsky, Theoretical Development Director

Dr. Yablonsky is an internationally recognized expert in chemical kinetics theory and in the construction of kinetic models and modeling of industrial catalytic processes.  During his long career in the former USSR he developed mathematical methods in chemical technology to decode complex chemical reactions.  In particular, his results have found industrial and ecological applications for CO- and H- oxidation reactions.  At Washington University he developed a new theory for analysis of TAP pulse response experiments as the basis of a highly refined catalyst characterization technique used to unravel the complexity of time-dependent chemical transformations.