As this new year opens, we at Chemical Engineering are looking forward to the wide variety of articles, activities and offerings that we have lined up for our readers. A highlight of 2015 is to honor the most-noteworthy chemical engineering technology commercialized anywhere in the world during 2013 or 2014 with this magazine’s 2015 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award.
Chemical Engineering has awarded the Kirkpatrick Award continuously since 1933. The 2015 winner will join a distinguished group that includes milestones such as Genomatica’s process for bio-based 1,4-butanediol (BDO; 2013); Chevron Phillips Chemical for significant advances in alpha-olefins technology (2005), Cargill Dow LLC for its production of thermoplastic resin from corn (2003); and Carbide & Carbon Chemical’s petrochemical syntheses (1933). The full list of winners can be found at www.chemengonline.com/kirkpatrick/.
How to nominate
Nominations may be submitted by any person or company, worldwide. The procedure consists simply of sending, by March 15, an unillustrated nominating brief of up to 500 words to: [email protected]
In order to be considered, each nomination should include the following: 1) a summary of the achievement and novelty of the technology; 2) a description of the difficult chemical-engineering problems solved; and 3) a description of how, where and when the development first became commercial in 2013 or 2014.
If you know of an achievement but do not have information to write a brief, contact the company involved, either to get the information or to propose that the firm itself submit a nomination. Companies are also welcome to nominate achievements of their own.
The path to the winner
After the deadline for nominations, March 15, we will review the nominations for validity. The nominations will then be sent to senior professors at accredited university chemical-engineering departments, who accordingly, constitute the Committee of Award. Each professor will vote, independently of each other, for a maximum of five best achievements.
The entries that collectively receive the most votes become the finalists in the competition. Each finalist company will then be asked to submit more-detailed information, such as a description of the technology, performance data and examples of the teamwork that generated the achievement.
Copies of these more-detailed packages will then be sent to a Board of Judges, which will have been chosen from within the Committee of Award. The Board will judge the entries to select the most noteworthy. The company that developed that achievement will be named the winner of the 2015 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award and the other finalist companies will be designated to receive Honor Awards. The awards will be bestowed in November at the Chem Show in New York.■
Dorothy Lozowski, Editor in Chief