Lanny D. Schmidt
Encyclopedia
Lanny D. Schmidt is an American chemist
, inventor, author, and Regents Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota
. He is well-known for his extensive work in surface science
, detailed chemistry (microkinetics), reaction engineering, catalysis
, and renewable energy
. He is also well-known for his work on millisecond reactors and reactive flash volatilization
.
in 1960 from Wheaton College
in Wheaton, Illinois
. From 1960 to 1964, he attended the University of Chicago
, where he received a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry
and was awarded a National Science Foundation
Graduate Fellowship. Among many research endeavors, his thesis on alkali metal adsorption was supervised by Professor Robert Gomer. In 1965, he completed a postdoctoral year at the University of Chicago
.
Department at the University of Minnesota
as an assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. Professor Schmidt's research focused on various aspects of the chemistry and engineering of chemical reactions on solid surfaces. Reaction systems of recent interest are catalytic combustion processes to produce products such as syngas
, olefins, and oxygenate
s by partial oxidation, NOx
removal, and incineration by total oxidation. One topic of his research is the characterization of adsorption and reactions on well-defined single-crystal surfaces. A second research topic is steady state and transient reaction kinetics under conditions from ultrahigh vacuum
to atmospheric pressure. Professor Schmidt also researches catalytic reaction engineering, in which detailed models of reactors are constructed to simulate industrial reactor performance, with particular emphasis on chemical synthesis and on catalytic combustion.
could be converted to molecular hydrogen
for fuel cell
at greater than 100% selectivity. The significant potential of this discovery has been well-described:
The discovery has been referenced over 200 times, and it has propelled Schmidt to the Scientific American Top 50 Researchers of 2004.
. He has supervised approximately 60 Ph.D. theses and 15 M.S. theses at Minnesota, and 11 of his former students hold university teaching positions.
and chemistry
as a separate discipline. In 2004, he published the second edition of his best-selling textbook, The Engineering of Chemical Reactions, which stressed the importance of the relationships between thermodynamics
, kinetics
, and transport phenomena for a full understanding of reactor
design.
Since 2003, Professor Schmidt has been a strong advocate of biomass-derived energy
and a supporter of biomass
processing research as a solution to the decreasing petroleum
supply. He frequently argues that thermochemical (non-biological) biomass conversion processes have significant advantages over biological processes that will eventually permit small-scale, highly efficient biomass-to-fuel chemical plants.
:
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
, inventor, author, and Regents Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
. He is well-known for his extensive work in surface science
Surface science
Surface science is the study of physical and chemical phenomena that occur at the interface of two phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid–gas interfaces, solid–vacuum interfaces, and liquid-gas interfaces. It includes the fields of surface chemistry and surface physics. Some related...
, detailed chemistry (microkinetics), reaction engineering, catalysis
Catalysis
Catalysis is the change in rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of a substance called a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. A catalyst may participate in multiple chemical transformations....
, and renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
. He is also well-known for his work on millisecond reactors and reactive flash volatilization
Reactive flash volatilization
Reactive flash volatilization is a chemical process that rapidly converts nonvolatile solids and liquids to volatile compounds by thermal decomposition for integration with catalytic chemistries.- Chemistry :...
.
Education and acclaim
Schmidt received a Bachelor of Science degree in ChemistryChemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
in 1960 from Wheaton College
Wheaton College (Illinois)
Wheaton College is a private, evangelical Protestant liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago in the United States...
in Wheaton, Illinois
Wheaton, Illinois
Wheaton is an affluent community located in DuPage County, Illinois, approximately west of Chicago and Lake Michigan. Wheaton is the county seat of DuPage County...
. From 1960 to 1964, he attended the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he received a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry
Physical chemistry
Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic, atomic, subatomic, and particulate phenomena in chemical systems in terms of physical laws and concepts...
and was awarded a National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
Graduate Fellowship. Among many research endeavors, his thesis on alkali metal adsorption was supervised by Professor Robert Gomer. In 1965, he completed a postdoctoral year at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
.
Research at Minnesota
In 1965, he joined the Chemical EngineeringChemical engineering
Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...
Department at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
as an assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. Professor Schmidt's research focused on various aspects of the chemistry and engineering of chemical reactions on solid surfaces. Reaction systems of recent interest are catalytic combustion processes to produce products such as syngas
Syngas
Syngas is the name given to a gas mixture that contains varying amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Examples of production methods include steam reforming of natural gas or liquid hydrocarbons to produce hydrogen, the gasification of coal, biomass, and in some types of waste-to-energy...
, olefins, and oxygenate
Oxygenate
Oxygenated chemical compounds contain oxygen as a part of their chemical structure. The term usually refers to oxygenated fuels. Oxygenates are usually employed as gasoline additives to reduce carbon monoxide that is created during the burning of the fuel....
s by partial oxidation, NOx
NOx
NOx is a generic term for the mono-nitrogen oxides NO and NO2 . They are produced from the reaction of nitrogen and oxygen gases in the air during combustion, especially at high temperatures...
removal, and incineration by total oxidation. One topic of his research is the characterization of adsorption and reactions on well-defined single-crystal surfaces. A second research topic is steady state and transient reaction kinetics under conditions from ultrahigh vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...
to atmospheric pressure. Professor Schmidt also researches catalytic reaction engineering, in which detailed models of reactors are constructed to simulate industrial reactor performance, with particular emphasis on chemical synthesis and on catalytic combustion.
Current research
Professor Schmidt's research since the early 1990s has focused on the catalytic partial oxidation of alkanes (particularly methane) and oxygenates in continuous flow fixed bed supported catalyst reactors. In 2004, Schmidt and his graduate students demonstrated that biomass-derived ethanolEthanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
could be converted to molecular hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
for fuel cell
Fuel cell
A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used...
at greater than 100% selectivity. The significant potential of this discovery has been well-described:
There is, however, a better way of storing the hydrogen needed for fuel cells: in ethanol, each molecule of which bundles six hydrogen atoms, two carbon atoms, and one oxygen atom into a package far more compact than gaseous hydrogen. Until recently, no one could figure out how to unbundle the ethanol molecules in an energy-efficient way. But Lanny Schmidt, a chemical engineer at the University of Minnesota, may now have found a silver bullet. He has developed a glass tube containing a series of metal plates about the size of a Bic lighter. Made out of the exotic metals rhodium and cerium, these plates can suck the hydrogen out of ethanol and feed it into a fuel cell. (Ironically, Schmidt had been looking for a catalyst that would strip hydrogen from plain old gasoline, but the ethanol turned out to work even better.)" — Sam Jaffe, Washington Monthly
The discovery has been referenced over 200 times, and it has propelled Schmidt to the Scientific American Top 50 Researchers of 2004.
Academic accomplishments
Professor Schmidt has published over 300 papers in refereed journals and is a member of the National Academy of EngineeringNational Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
. He has supervised approximately 60 Ph.D. theses and 15 M.S. theses at Minnesota, and 11 of his former students hold university teaching positions.
Policy and public service
Throughout his career, Professor Schmidt has promoted the importance of reaction engineering to chemical engineeringChemical engineering
Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...
and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
as a separate discipline. In 2004, he published the second edition of his best-selling textbook, The Engineering of Chemical Reactions, which stressed the importance of the relationships between thermodynamics
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...
, kinetics
Chemical kinetics
Chemical kinetics, also known as reaction kinetics, is the study of rates of chemical processes. Chemical kinetics includes investigations of how different experimental conditions can influence the speed of a chemical reaction and yield information about the reaction's mechanism and transition...
, and transport phenomena for a full understanding of reactor
Reactor
Reactor can mean:* Bioreactor, any device or system that supports a biologically active environment.* Chemical reactor, a device for containing and controlling a chemical reaction* Nuclear reactor, a device for containing and controlling a nuclear reaction...
design.
Since 2003, Professor Schmidt has been a strong advocate of biomass-derived energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
and a supporter of biomass
Biomass
Biomass, as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel....
processing research as a solution to the decreasing petroleum
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
supply. He frequently argues that thermochemical (non-biological) biomass conversion processes have significant advantages over biological processes that will eventually permit small-scale, highly efficient biomass-to-fuel chemical plants.
Achievements and key publications
Professor Schmidt has authored the following journal articles describing significant advances in chemical reaction engineeringChemical reaction engineering
Chemical reaction engineering is a specialty in chemical engineering or industrial chemistry dealing with chemical reactors. Frequently the term relates specifically to catalytic reaction systems where either a homogeneous or heterogeneous catalyst is present in the reactor...
:
- D. A. Hickman and L. D. Schmidt, "Syngas Formation by Direct Catalytic Oxidation of Methane", Science 259, 343-346 (1993).
- A. Bodke, D. Olschke, L. D. Schmidt, and E. Ranzi, "High Selectivities to Ethylene by Partial Oxidation of Ethane", Science 285, 712, (1999).
- G. A. Deluga, J. R. Salge, and L. D. Schmidt, and X.E. Verykios, "Renewable Hydrogen from Ethanol by Autothermal Reforming", Science 303, 993-997 (2004).
- J.R. Salge, B.J. Dreyer, P.J. Dauenhauer, L.D. Schmidt, "Renewable Hydrogen from Nonvolatile Fuels by Reactive Flash Volatilization," Science 314 (2006) 801-804.
External links
- Schmidt Research Group at the University of Minnesota
- Lanny D. Schmidt Biographical Documentary (Part one) (Part two)
- Scientific American: 50 scientific leaders of 2004