Education award returns to Rice
Walter Chapman wins top gas processors’ honor

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Walter Chapman, Rice University’s William W. Akers Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Institute, has been named this year’s winner of the prestigious Donald L. Katz Award by the Gas Processors Association for outstanding accomplishments in research and technology and for excellence in engineering education.

	WALTER CHAPMAN

The award closes a circle for Chapman. Early in his career at Rice, he worked closely with Riki Kobayashi, Rice’s Louis Calder Professor Emeritus in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who was the first Katz Award winner 25 years ago and the only other winner from Rice.

Kobayashi earned his bachelor’s in chemical engineering at Rice and a doctorate at the University of Michigan, where Katz, a legendary natural gas researcher, was his thesis adviser.

Chapman collaborated with Kobayashi on several projects related to natural gas hydrates and gas processing. “Riki oversaw the experiments, and I developed the computational models,” Chapman said. “Since Riki retired in 1998, I have directed the gas hydrates laboratory and continued to develop fundamental models.” One such model, the SAFT equation of state, has become a standard engineering design tool to predict fluid properties and phase behavior in the natural gas, petroleum, petrochemical and polymer industries.

Chapman’s research group uses molecular simulation, computer visualization, statistical mechanics and nuclear magnetic resonance to discover how material properties and structures depend on molecular forces.

“Professor Kobayashi’s laboratory was known for measurements at extremes of temperature and pressure,” Chapman said. “We have continued that tradition, measuring water content in natural gas systems at the lowest temperatures (with water content of approximately 50 parts per billion) and at the highest temperatures and pressures reported. Measurements and modeling at these extremes are necessary for industry to produce oil and gas from extreme deep water and in developing processes to separate carbon dioxide from natural gas streams.”

Chapman’s group is also working on tools to predict properties and nanoscale structures of self-assembling complex fluids. He said Sandia National Laboratory, Dow Chemical and many other groups around the world have adopted one such model.

Chapman accepted the award last week at the annual Gas Processors Association Convention in Austin.