Rice Professor Named to National Academy of Engineering

Contact: Philip Montgomery
Phone: (713) 831-4792

Rice Professor Named to National Academy of Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
elected Riki Kobayashi, a Rice University professor of chemical
engineering, as a member of the academy.

He was one of 77 engineers in the United States elected to the
NAE during the annual February induction. The NAE is a national
advisory body of the federal government. Election to the body is
considered one of the highest honors conferred on engineers.

The letter announcing the elections said the academy elects
members based upon their “important contributions to engineering
theory and practice including significant contributions to the
literature of engineering theory and practice and those who have
demonstrated unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and
developing fields of technology.”

“I am delighted that Riki has been elected to the National
Academy of Engineering, a well deserved honor,” said Clarence
Miller, chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Rice. “For many years, he has been a central figure in the department’s
research program in thermodynamics, which is widely recognized for
its excellence. Riki and his coworkers have designed and built many
novel types of equipment to allow improved measurements of
properties of a wide range of fluids over a wide range of
temperatures and pressures.”

George Hirasaki, a Rice professor of chemical engineering and a
member of the NAE, said, “Perhaps more than any other living
individual, Professor Kobayashi has provided the engineering
database for the natural gas industry. The Gas Processors
Association recognized this outstanding lifetime accomplishment in
their first Donald L. Katz Award. His work was characterized in a
1987 AIChE symposium in his honor as `one of the century’s most
prolific and lasting efforts in thermodynamic and transport
properties.'”

Hirasaki said Kobayashi had the vision to pioneer the
measurement of hydrocarbon vapor-water-gas hydrate equilibrium; the
use of gas chromatography to measure vapor-liquid and vapor-solid
equilibria, phase transitions and molecular diffusivity; and the use
of laser light scatter to measure properties in the critical region.

Some recent industrial applications of Kobayashi’s work include
the design of CO2 processing facilities for enhanced oil recovery
and design criteria for dehydrating natural gas in North Slope and
North Sea production to prevent hydrate formation.

Most recently, Kobayashi along with two research associates,
Fouad Fleyfel and Kyoo Song, have submitted a paper for publication
announcing their discovery of the mechanism that allows gas and
water to form an icy mixture called hydrates. Hydrates plague the
natural gas industry by forming icy plugs that prevent the
transmission of gas through pipelines.

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.
It has an undergraduate student population of 2,584, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,489 and a full-time faculty of
448.

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