Hope for Midwest's coal fields

An effort to find ways to produce alternative fuels from one of our region's most abundant resources -- coal -- has received $548,485 in funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical engineering and associate director of the University's Chemical Reaction Engineering Laboratory (CREL), won the three-year grant from the DOE's Federal Energy Technology Center for a proposal titled "Advanced Diagnostic Techniques for Three-Phase Slurry Bubble Column Reactors."

Al-Dahhan will collaborate with Milorad P. Dudukovic, Ph.D., the Laura and William Jens Professor and chair of chemical engineering; L.-S. Fan, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and chair of chemical engineering at Ohio State University; and Bernard A. Toseland, Ph.D., of Air Products and Chemicals Inc., to develop and implement specialized diagnostic techniques at CREL and at Ohio State's Industrial Fluidization Laboratory.

Slurry bubble column reactors are cylindrical vessels in which gas containing one or more reactants -- for example, synthesis gas -- is mixed with liquid reactants and products and a finely dispersed catalyst.

They are reactors of choice for a wide range of industrial processes, in particular for the conversion of synthesis gas, a carbon monoxide and hydrogen mixture, to fuels and chemicals by processes called Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactions. FT is an acknowledged route for clean use of coal-derived carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases.

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Paper NSF grant proposals soon to be thing of the past

The National Science Foundation (NSF), a principal source of research funding, has made rapid progress toward electronic administration of grants with the Web-based system Fastlane, and in fact researchers will have to submit all progress and final reports via Fastlane by Oct. 1, according to Theodore J. Cicero, vice chancellor for research.

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Japanese visitors seek help with child abuse prevention

Seven delegates from Japanese social service agencies and government health ministries visited the George Warren Brown School of Social Work last week to learn more about how child abuse and related problems are handled in America.

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Hands-on

Thirty-five undergraduate biology students and their faculty mentors met Saturday, Sept. 18, on the third floor of McDonnell Hall to report the results of their summer research, giving presentations on topics ranging from the intricacies of neuroscience to the genetics of fruit flies and algae to lizard morphology.

The opportunity to do research was made possible by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's (HHMI) Summer Undergraduate Research Program, which awards qualified students $2,900 plus a housing allowance for 10 weeks' intensive laboratory research. Washington University has received HHMI grants since 1993 to operate this program, and over that time 297 students have been HHMI Summer Undergraduate Research fellows.

Students gave both poster sessions and formal presentations on their work. In many instances, the presentations were the first that the students, ranging from sophomores to seniors, have ever given. Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton addressed the group, and Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., professor of biology and newly elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, gave the keynote address, titled "Biodiversity in the Orphan Crop, Cassava: Basic and Applied Research."

Four individuals whose work is particularly outstanding will present their summer research results at national meetings.

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