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CMU chemist honored for work on wood pulp bleaching
Monday, June 28, 1999 By Byron Spice, Science Editor, Post-Gazette
A Carnegie Mellon University chemist who found a way to use hydrogen peroxide to whiten wood pulp without producing hazardous dioxin has won the 1999 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award.
Terry Collins and more than two dozen members of his research team will accept the award during ceremonies this evening at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Since 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has presented the awards to recognize innovative chemistry that helps eliminate or reduce noxious by-products of chemical processes or reduce the need to use dangerous chemicals as part of those processes.
Collins took this year's honors in the academic category by developing iron-based peroxide activators that will help the wood pulp industry eliminate the use of chlorine in bleaching processes, which results in harmful chlorinated pollutants such as dioxin. The chemical catalysts, formally called tetraamidomacrocyclic ligand activators, or TAML, increase the potency of hydrogen peroxide, a benign oxidating agent.
When used with laundry detergents, the catalysts inhibit dye transfer, which could pave the way for washing machines that use less water. They also have proven adept at removing mustard stains from clothing. Work is continuing on using the catalysts for water purification.
Other winners of this year's green chemistry awards include, in the small business category, Biofine Inc. of Waltham, Mass., for designing a process to convert biomass such as unrecyclable waste paper, municipal solid waste and agricultural residues into levulinic acid, a chemical intermediate used to synthesize other useful products.
Lilly Research Laboratories is being recognized for an efficient, low-waste method of producing an anticonvulsant drug, and Nalco Chemical Co. of Naperville, Ill., drew kudos for a water-based process for making liquid polymers. Dow AgroSciences is being recognized for Spinosad, an insecticide developed from a Caribbean soil microorganism that kills chewing pests while having little effect on most beneficial insects.
Nominations were judged by an expert panel selected by the American Chemical Society.
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