February 11, 2009 —

Theodore T. Tsotsis, Ph.D.
Robert E. Vivian Professor of Energy Resources and Chair
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California

Theodore T. Tsotsis, Ph.D. is the Robert E. Vivian Professor in Energy Resources and chair of the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at University of Southern California. His research interests include reaction engineering, membrane separations, reactor design and the modeling of transport in complex porous media. He is the author of over 180 technical papers, several book chapters, five U.S. and one European patent and one book. Professor Tsotsis is the co-founder and a member of the executive board of USC’s NSF/IGERT Center in Environmental Engineering. He received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1978.

Lecture Address                  “
Microporous Membranes for Conventional and Reactive Separations

Abstract                 
Microporous inorganic membranes are attracting substantial research interest due to their potential for finding widespread use in a number of high-temperature conventional and reactive separation applications of interest in the energy field.  In our group, the emphasis has been on carbon molecular sieve and SiC membranes. The preparation and characterization of these materials presents significant technical challenges. Issues of membrane preparation, reproducibility and robustness to the proposed application environments remain of significant importance. In this talk, we will describe the techniques that we utilize in the group for the preparation and characterization of such microporous membranes. They involve a variety of surface analytical techniques, TGA and various chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques useful for characterizing the membrane structure, and its surface and bulk chemical composition.

For more information about the lecture series, please visit:
http://www.chee.uh.edu/info/lusslectures.html