Research

I had many collaborators during my productive years in research, including professors, students and industrial researchers, and you can glean the breadth of these collaborators by looking through my resume. However, there are three very special collaborators I would like to acknowledge: Vladislav Kanazirev, Kerry Dooley, and Enrique Iglesia. These researchers helped shape my career as well as providing great friendships throughout the years. I don't wish to slight any of the others I have collaborated with - I have cherished them all - but these three have been too special not to mention.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention the three greatest influences on me during my formative years as a chemical engineer: my father, Jerry L. Price, my graduate research advisor Professor Joe W. Hightower, and a special mentor from undergraduate school, Jack Hopper.

Linked here is a short history of my career.

Tellurium Loaded Zeolites

In his early work as a graduate student at Rice University (1975 - 79), Dr. Price worked in Tellurium Loaded Zeolites culminating in his PhD dissertation "The Active Nature of Tellurium Loaded Zeolites" which was published in 1979. In addition to his work at Rice, a few continuing publications in the area followed during his years at LSU. Here are some representative publications in Tellurium Loaded Zeolites:

1. G.L. Price, "The Active Nature of Tellurium Loaded Zeolite Dehydrocyclization Catalysts", Ph.D. Thesis, Rice University, 1979.
2. G.L. Price, Z. Ismagilov, and J.W. Hightower, "Dehydrocyclization of n-Paraffins over Te-NaX Zeolites Catalysts", Seventh International Congress on Catalysis, Part A (T. Seiyama and K. Tanabe, Eds.) p. 708. Elsevier, Amsterdam/New York (1981).
3. G.L. Price, Z. Ismagilov, and J.W. Hightower, "Tellurium NaX Zeolites. I. Deuterium Tracer Studies of Cyclohexane Dehydrogenation to Benzene", Journal of Catalysis, 73, 361-365 (1982).
4. G.L. Price, Z. Ismagilov, and J.W. Hightower, "Tellurium NaX Zeolites. II. Nature of Active Sites", Journal of Catalysis, 81, 369-374, (1983).
5. G.L. Price and C. Egedy, "Studies on the Reaction of n-Octane over Several Tellurium Loaded Zeolites", Journal of Catalysis, 84, 461-467 (1983).
6. E. Iglesia, J. Baumgartner, G.L. Price, K.D. Rose, and J.L. Robbins, "Alkane Rearrangement Pathways on Tellurium-Based Catalysts", Journal of Catalysis, 125, 95-111 (1990).

Gallium Loaded Zeolites

The most important and highly acclaimed research work that Dr. Price accomplished was on Gallium Loaded Zeolites. These are a class of materials that have some industrial importance in such processes as the Cyclar Process. In this system, Dr. Price and co-workers discovered that gallium undergoes reduction and gallium ions migrate into cationic positions in the zeolite under reaction conditions in a hydrocarbon feedstream or other reduction environment. They named this process RSSIE (reductive solid state ion-exchange). RSSIE was described in the seminal paper "Ga2O3/HZSM-5 Propane Aromatization Catalysts: Formation of Active Centers via Solid State Reaction", Journal of Catalysis, 126, 267-278 (1990)." As of this writing, this publication has received almost 300 citations. Other important papers dealing with gallium zeolites which have received over 100 citations each include:

1. E. Iglesia, J. Baumgartner and G.L. Price, "Kinetic Coupling and Hydrogen Surface Fugacities in Heterogeneous Catalysis. I. Alkane Reactions on Te/NaX, H-ZSM5, and Ga/H-ZSM5", Journal of Catalysis, 134, 549-571 (1992).
2. K.M. Dooley, C. Chang, and G.L. Price, "Effects of Pretreatments on State of Ga and Aromatization Activity of Ga/ZSM-5 Catalysis", Applied Catalysis, A:84(1), 17-30 (1992).

Potassium Promoters for Palladium Selective Hydrogenation Catalysts

Palladium on alumina is a well known and very important catalyst for the selective hydrogenation of acetylene in ethylene streams. This process is used industrially to remove acetylene from raw ethylene streams so the difficult and expensive distillation process for separation of the two molecules can be bypassed.

Our contribution to this field was to investigate the effects of the potassium as a modifier to these systems as a method for improving the selectivity, and the results were excellent. In fact, the results were so promising that researchers at Phillips Petroleum Company picked up on the work and developed a whole new class of catalysts that became the premium catalysts for their process for the removal of acetylene from ethylene.

1. Y.H. Park and G.L. Price, "Deuterium Tracer Study on the Effect of Carbon Monoxide on the Selective Hydrogenation of Acetylene over Pd/Al2O3", I&EC Research, 30, 1693-1699 (1991).
2. Y.H. Park and G.L. Price, "Temperature-Programmed-Reaction Study on the Effect of Carbon Monoxide on the Acetylene Reaction over Pd/Al2O3", I&EC Research, 30, 1700-1707 (1991).
3. Y.H. Park and G.L. Price, "Potassium Promoter for Pd/Al2O3 Selective Hydrogenation Catalysts", Journal of the Chemical Society, Chemical Communications, 17, 1188-1189 (1991).
4. Y.H. Park and G.L. Price, "Promotional Effects of Potassium on Pd/Al2O3 Selective Hydrogenation Catalysts", I&EC Research, 31, 469-474 (1992).

Biofuels from Algae

Algae represent a possible route to biofuels which could eliminate the need for fossil fuels. This is a theoretical statement because microbiologists, who we as chemical engineers have relied upon to provide algae, have not been able to deliver the genetically engineered algae species that were originally proposed. If this "theoretical" algae were ever to be produced and the growing conditions perfected, we would not have to rely on fossil fuels for our energy needs anymore.

Our work in this area showed how chemicals that could be extracted from the "theoretical" strains of genetically engineered algae could be converted into fuels which could be directly used in our current infrastructure - refineries, fuels transportation, and delivery. Below are a few of our publications in this field.

1. Yang He, Sean E. Barnes, Daniel W. Crunkleton, and Geoffrey L. Price; “Comparison of ginger oil conversion over MFI, BEA, and FAU”, Fuel 96 , 469-75 (2012).
2. Noah I. Tracy, Daniel W. Crunkleton, and Geoffrey L. Price, “Gasoline Production from Phytol”, Fuel 89, 3493 - 97 (2010).
3. Daichuan Chen, Noah I. Tracy, Daniel W. Crunkleton, and Geoffrey L. Price, “Comparison of canola oil conversion over MFI, BEA, and FAU”, Applied Catalysis A: General 384, 206 - 12, (2010).
4. Noah I. Tracy, Daniel W. Crunkleton and Geoffrey L. Price, “Catalytic Cracking Of Squalene To Gasoline-Range Molecules”, Biomass and Bioenergy 35, 1060 (2011).
5. Noah I. Tracy, Daichuan Chen, Daniel W Crunkleton, and Geoffrey L Price, “Hydrogenated Monoterpenes as Diesel Fuel Additives”, Fuel 88, 2238–2240 (2009).

Patents

A listing of patents that I have been part of are below:

1. G.L. Price, V. Kanazirev, and K.M. Dooley, "Gallium-Containing Zeolite Catalysts", US# 5,149,679 (1992).
2. G.L. Price, V. Kanazirev, and K.M. Dooley, "Gallium-Containing Zeolite Catalysts", European Patent Application PCT-US91-02482 (1993).
3. G.L. Price and V. Kanazirev, "Copper-Containing Zeolite Catalysts", U.S. Patent #5,583,081 (1996).
4, Alex Aravanis, Jason Pyle, Geoffrey Price, and Daniel Crunkleton, “Methods for refining hydrocarbon feedstocks”, PCT Int. Appl. WO 2009039015 (2009).
5. Alex Aravanis, Jason Pyle, Geoffrey Price, and Daniel Crunkleton, “Methods of refining hydrocarbon feedstocks”, UK Patent # GB2454853 (2010).
6. Alex Aravanis, Jason Pyle, Geoffrey Price, and Daniel Crunkleton, “Methods of refining hydrocarbon feedstocks”, United States Patent 8,075,641, December 13, 2011.
7. Jason Pyle, Alex Aravanis, Geoffrey Price, and Daniel Crunkleton, “Methods of refining hydrocarbon feedstocks”, United States Patent 8,292,975, October 23, 2012.
8. Geoffrey L. Price and Brian L. Goodall, Production of Aromatics from Renewable Resources, US Provisional Patent Application, filed Dec. 24, 2010.
9. Geoffrey L. Price, Brian L. Goodall, and Daniel J. Sajkowski, “Production of Aromatics from Renewable Resources”, PCT Int. Appl. WO 2012/088546 (2012).
10. Geoffrey L. Price, Brian L. Goodall, and Daniel J. Sajkowski, “Production of Aromatics from Renewable Resources”, US Patent Application # 20130289324 (2013).