ORLANDO SECTION NEWSLETTER


Vol. 13, No. 2

American Chemical Society

April 2008

There will be two Section meetings this month. The first will be at Florida Tech in Melbourne on Thursday, April 17. The second meeting will be held on Monday, April 21 at Rollins College.

 

APRIL PROGRAM at Florida Tech

Date:          Thursday, April 17, 2008

Where:       Lecture Room PS 140, Physical Sciences Building

                  Florida Institute of Technology

                  150 W University Blvd

                  Melbourne, FL 32901

Time:          5:00 pm

Speaker:     Dr. William F. Carroll

Topic:         “From Garbage to Stuff: How We Recycle Plastics”

The Orlando Local Section has partnered with Daytona Beach College to sponsor two activities with former ACS President William Carroll, Jr.  The first will be a presentation hosted by Florida Tech as given above, which is open to Section members and the general public. The second activity will be a seminar held at Daytona Beach College on Friday, April 18th for students and faculty members.  Dr. Carroll will also be meeting with area high school students while he is in town.

Abstract of the Talk

Is that recycling bin the springboard to giving material a new life or is it simply a blue wastebasket? What about surplus materials from industrial processes? Do they find their way out the back door to the landfill? This presentation discusses the four critical steps in recycling-- collection, separation, reprocessing and remanufacture-and how they relate to plastics. The technology, the cost and the efficacy of the processes all matter. And the operative word, plastics, really is plural. Presentation includes a primer in the basic kinds of plastics, how they differ and how they're used in common articles, especially packaging. The presenter brings a few common articles for demonstrations, and promises not to recycle an old quote from "The Graduat

 

About the Speaker

 

William F. Carroll, Ph.D.

 

Dr. William F. Carroll, Jr. holds a B.A. in Chemistry and Physics from DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, an M.S. from Tulane University in New Orleans, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, majoring in Organic Chemistry. Bill started his industry career in 1978 and after a year with Rohm and Haas Company, Bristol, PA, moved to what is now known as Occidental Chemical Corporation. He is currently Vice President, Chlorovinyl Issues for OxyChem and works on public policy issues and communications related to chlorine and PVC. He is also Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana and teaches polymer chemistry there. Dr. Carroll is a past President (2005) of the American Chemical Society, a member of the ACS Budget and Finance Committee, and past chair of its International Activities Committee. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a member of the US National Committee for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and chair of the Science Advisory Board for DePauw University. He has been an active member of and chaired various committees for a number of chemistry, plastics, fire protection and recycling organizations. He has served on expert groups commissioned by the United Nations Environmental Program, the State of Florida, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Dr. Carroll received the Vinyl Institute’s Roy T. Gottesman Leadership Award for lifetime achievement in 2000. He holds two patents, and has over forty publications in the fields of organic electrochemistry, polymer chemistry, combustion chemistry and physics, incineration, dioxin, plastics recycling and chlorine issues.

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The annual FAME meeting will be held in May in Orlando. For more information, please see http://membership.acs.org/F/Florida/fame2008.html

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Second Program

 

APRIL PROGRAM at Rollins College

 

Date:          Monday, April 21, 2008

Where:       Bieberbach Reed Conference Room

                  Cornell Campus Center

                  Rollins College

                  Winter Park, FL 32789

Time:          7:00 pm

Speaker:     Dr. R. Paul Philp

                  Joe and Robert Klabzuba Chair in Geology and Geophysics
George Lynn Cross Research Professor

                  School of Geology and Geophysics

University of Oklahoma

Topic:         “Environmental Forensics, or Who Was Responsible for the Spill?”

 

 

Abstract of the Talk

As soon as organic compounds are spilled into the environment, changes will start to occur to them as a result of weathering process. For example, with crude oils, changes will range from evaporation and loss of light ends to extensive biodegradation and loss of many of the compounds typically used for correlating spilled oils with their original source. As a result of these weathering processes, it is often difficult to correlate the spilled oils with their suspected sources. There are a number of sophisticated techniques available for this type of forensic geochemistry which can be used for correlating weathered samples with their respective source materials. In this talk specific emphasis will be directed towards the most recent technique for use in this area, namely gas chromatography combined with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GCIRMS). Other applications will be described to demonstrate that GCIRMS can also be used to determine the source of leaks from underground storage tanks and sources of gases from leaking pipelines. Variations in the isotopic composition of the MTBE added to gasoline also provides the opportunity of using GCIRMS as a means of monitoring, and determination of the source of, gasoline spills from underground storage tanks.

About the Speaker

R. Paul Philp, Ph.D.

Dr. Philp received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Sydney (Australia) in 1972 and, more recently, a D.Sc. degree from the same University in 1998. He spent one and a half years as a post-doctoral fellow with Professor G. Eglinton at the University of Bristol (England), undertaking research in various aspects of organic geochemistry and the application of analytical techniques such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to this area of research. Following this, he spent four years at the University of California, Berkeley, as a research associate, directing the organic geochemistry research group of Professor Melvin Calvin. He returned to Sydney in 1977 to join the CSIRO, Fuel Geoscience Unit, now part of the Division of Fossil Fuels, where he was a principal research scientist studying various aspects of petroleum geochemistry. In June 1984, Professor Philp joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma. The major theme of his research during the past 15 years has been directed at the application of organic chemistry to fossil fuel research. The second major area of research has been the characterization of source rocks, coals, and oil shales using microscale pyrolysis techniques combined directly with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. More recently a large amount of his work has been concerned with environmental studies, particularly investigating the use of stable carbon isotopes as a means of monitoring and tracking pollutants in the environment. Professor Philp is also the associate editor of Chem. Geol. and has served as the chairman of the Geochemistry Division of the American Chemical Society.

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The annual FAME meeting will be held in May in Orlando.  For more information, please see http://membership.acs.org/F/Florida/fame2008.html