Inorganic and physical chemistry

James Haw, the R. R. Irani CEO of Occidental Petroleum Professor of Chemistry in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, focuses his research on inorganic and physical chemistry, with particular emphasis on heterogeneous catalysis. He is also chair of the environmental studies program.

Haw's interdisciplinary research group studies reaction mechanisms in catalysis by zeolites, metal oxides, and supported metals. His team has elucidated many of the details of the hydrocarbon pool mechanism in methanol-to-olefin (MTO) catalysis. M TO is a long-standing scientific problem and is the crucial and central step in the conversion of methane to polyolefins -- a group of thermoplastic, stiff, light, and hard polymers used for injection molding, mostly in the automotive and appliance industries.

Haw's team exploits its understanding of MTO to synthesize new MTO catalysts. Other mechanistic projects involve hydrocarbon cracking and partial oxidation catalysis. The development of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance methods for the study of catalysts and other materials is also a longstanding interest of the group.

Haw and his team may have solved a riddle that has long puzzled chemists researching catalysis. In the wake of the oil crisis of the 1970s, scientists discovered that methanol -- a liquid alcohol -- could be converted to gasoline and other hydrocarbons, but they were not able to pinpoint the catalyst for the chemical reaction.

Haw's research team discovered that by going to great lengths to purify the methanol and gases, it could completely stop the reaction. Haw concluded that the methanol reacts with impurities, which decompose to make chemicals like ethylene. These new chemicals react with methanol again. In other words, a previously undiscovered mini catalytic cycle occurs before the major one scientists had focused on. The chemistry of this process is changed by a few parts per million of impurities.

These findings may alter how the methanol conversion process is taught and may affect patents based on what Haw contends is a faulty idea about the catalyst.

Although much of its work is experimental, the Haw group also makes extensive use of theoretical modeling of the above chemistry using HPCC resources.