American Institute of Chemical Engineers - Northern California Section

The Chemical Engineering Excellence Award program has been instituted to recognize outstanding Northern California chemical engineering professionals and projects. The awards are offered in a number of categories. Selection is by committee vote and only nominations meeting minimum criteria are considered.

The awards, consisting of personalized plaques presented during the luncheon at the NorCal AIChE April 6, 2006 One Day Symposium, which was held at the H's Lordship Restaurant conference facilities in Berkeley.

- Dr. Habib Amin, Chemical Engineering Excellence Awards Chair

PROJECT AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE

Industrical Project of the Year

E & J Gallo

Three new wineries engineered and constructed at the Livingston, Sonoma, and Martini facilities adding about 70,000 tons/year crush capacity to Gallo's totaling 1 million crush capacity. One of these three wineries is easily the world most automated while exceeding all quality targets.
Three scales of Fermentation R&D facility have been built (1-50 k liters) and staffed by Chemists, Chemical Engineers, and Biofermentation professionals ensuring that Gallo will be a leader in fermentation process innovation and cost.
Gallo has committed to investments in bottling and packaging initiating a multi-step plan in 2004 to renovate its entire 60MM case-per-year bottling capacity on three separate sites for improved efficiency, agility, and package flexibility. These investments also ensure that we will be a leader in packaging innovation as the industry moves to alternative wine closures and packages.
Gallo has been recognized as a leader in information technology from packaged goods to consumer. Most recently Gallo has launched an effort to install Management Execution Systems (MES) from winery to bottling all accessible over the intranet. Gallo engineers can now troubleshoot from their desktops, which is particularly challenging given the seasonality and semi-batch nature of operations.
Gallo now has mass balances in place at all of its wineries as well as energy balances on key unit operations. While basic to most industries this is a first to wine. Tools such as these have helped Gallo become the most efficient integrated winery in the world with yields on sugar well over 90%.
Gallo is the world's first winery to roll-out Lean Six Sigma as a continuous improvement process.

E&J Gallo is customer focused, innovative and driven to advance operational excellence and has recently moved to the 2nd position largest wine maker in the world. Chemical engineering is playing an increasingly important role in E&J Gallo's drive for operational excellence, including project management, packaging technology, process technology and instrumentation and controls. At E&J Gallo chemical engineers identify and implement ideas to promote efficiency at wineries, cellars and in bottling/packaging. Michael Roland, Vice-President of Corporate Engineering, leads the application of E&J Gallo concepts for material balances, transport processes, process controls and separation processes to bring consistently high quality wines to the market. The grandson of Co-Founder Ernest Gallo, Ernest J. Gallo, is himself a Chemical Engineer from Stanford and a major champion of the application of Chemical Engineering principles to problem solving/innovation in wine making.

Research Project of the Year

John M. Prausnitz

An applied physical chemist, Prausnitz has developed molecular thermodynamics - an understanding of the way molecules interact in fluids and solids - for the design of separation operations in large chemical plants to make them more efficient, environmentally friendly and safe, and to reduce energy consumption. The concepts and computer programs he developed have been key to the design of numerous large-scale chemical plants, including petroleum refineries, facilities for the manufacture of polymers, plastics and pharmaceuticals, and industrial-scale production of oxygen from air.

Prausnitz joined the UC Berkeley chemical engineering faculty in 1955, working closely with chemists in the Department of Chemistry to adapt modern molecular science to the chemical industry. He became one of the main architects of the modern design of chemical manufacturing processes in the United States and abroad, moving away from trial-and-error methods to the use of powerful quantitative prediction methods.

In the petroleum industry, for example, crude oil containing hundreds of different compounds must be distilled into many different products, ranging from gasoline and kerosene to heating oil. The many towers visible at oil refineries are the distillation columns that do this separation. Using the fundamentals of physical chemistry, Prausnitz developed the concepts that allow such large-scale distillation columns to operate without the danger of fires or explosions and without wasting energy or raw materials.

His concepts also are the basis of the design of polymer manufacturing plants, such as those making polyethylene or rubber. He also concentrated on raising the efficiency of air separation into oxygen and nitrogen through distillation at low temperatures. Oxygen has its greatest use in the steel industry and in purification of wastewaters.

More recently, Prausnitz has applied molecular thermodynamics to the biotechnology industry.

"John has pioneered the application of molecular thermodynamics to emerging as well as existing industries," said Harvey Blanch, UC Berkeley professor of chemical engineering. "Over 15 years ago, John recognized the important role that thermodynamics could play in biotechnology. During the course of our subsequent collaboration, John translated advances in molecular thermodynamics from a chemical to a biological context, providing the fundamental underpinnings for many bioprocesses, including bioseparations, enzymatic catalysis and protein stabilization."

Prausnitz has distilled his techniques into two much-used books, the textbook "Molecular Thermodynamics of Fluid Phase Equilibrium," now in its third edition, and the reference book "Properties of Gases and Liquids," now in its fifth edition. A free computer program he created, Unifac, is used widely in the design of chemical manufacturing plants.

Prausnitz also has mentored a generation of engineers and industrialists, supervising 75 Ph.D. students and 35 post-doctoral fellows during his nearly 50-year career. He coauthored with his students the first book on computer calculations of phase equilibrium, predating by at least two decades the widespread use of automated, computer-based physical property prediction. He has authored or coauthored over 600 publications and three pioneering books used by chemical engineers throughout the world.

Prausnitz was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1928 and became an American citizen in 1944. He obtained his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University in 1950 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1955, the year he joined the UC Berkeley faculty.

Now a Professor of the Graduate School at UC Berkeley, Prausnitz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, as well as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of L'Aquila, Italy, the Technical University of Berlin and Princeton University. He recently received an honorary doctorate from one of the world's oldest universities, the University of Padua in Italy.

The National Medal of Science - won to date by 26 UC Berkeley faculty - honors individuals in a variety of fields for pioneering scientific research that has led to a better understanding of the world around us, as well as to the innovations and technologies that give the United States its global economic edge. The National Science Foundation administers the award, established by Congress in 1959.

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE

Professional Achievement: Randy Sawyer, Director, Hazardous Materials Programs, Contra Costa Health Services

For the last fourteen years, Randy Sawyer has worked for the Contra County Health Services Hazardous Materials Programs and has progressed from an Accidental Release Prevention Engineer to an Accidental Release Prevention Programs Supervisor and now the Hazardous Materials Programs Director. Randy was instrumental in developing the following accidental release prevention programs for the County: Risk Management and Prevention Program, the California Accidental Release Prevention Program, and the Contra Costa County's Industrial Safety Ordinance. As part of the Industrial Safety Ordinance, Randy led the development of the requirements for Inherently Safer Systems design and considerations for the major industrial facilities in Contra Costa.

Randy Sawyer has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri at Rolla. He has worked as a Production Engineer in a light hydrocarbon plant with Dow Chemical at Freeport, Texas. He has worked as a Process Service Engineer for Areojet General in Sacramento and as a Process Design Engineer, Project Engineer, and a Project Manager for Bayer in Kansas City, Mo.

Randy has made many presentations including those at the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), a part of the National AIChE Annual Meetings, and has also made presentations at the NORCAL AIChE meetings. The current program he is directing includes more than 33 scientists/engineers that include five chemical engineers. Randy is a member of AIChE.

Randy has substantial industrial and management experience. He was instrumental in the development of the Contra Costa County's Community Warning System. He has also been involved with various outreach programs on behalf of the Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER) organization and has been a spokesperson for Contra Costa County on the Industrial Safety Ordinance and its evolvements.

Professional Development: Bipin Almaula, Chemical Engineer

Bipin Almaula has been active in NORCAL AIChE for a long time. For the last many years, he has been the principal contact between the various student chapters and NORCAL AIChE. In that role, he has improved NORCAL's interactions with all the student chapters within the universities associated with NORCAL. He has arranged meetings with the student chapters, has driven long distances to meet with them, and recruited many students to volunteer for AIChE. And he has done all this, while somehow managing to stay in the background. It has been his sincere hope that nobody would notice his exceptional service if he just kept quiet about it. Bipin does not expect any reward or recognition for this work. He is doing it for the benefit of the profession. NORCAL AIChE would like to recognize him for his sustained service to the Section.

Bipin has had a long career in industry: his first job started in 1951! Since then, he has worked for a number of companies and the US Government (Department of Energy and Department of Defense). He has patents related to electro-optics technology. In addition to AIChE, Bipin is a member of IEEE and ACS.