COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

(top row, from left) Kossa Diamonde, Tejinder Brar; (middle row) Lev Davydov, Wenmin Zhang, Ettireddy Reddy, Donovan Pena; (bottom row) Alexander Vorontsov, Eric Burckle, Panagiotis Smirniotis, Kyesang Yoo, Srikant Gopal

Panagiotis G. Smirniotis hosted Alexandre V. Vorontsov of the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Russia for six months beginning in May 1999. The visit was focused on developing a process for destruction of chemical warfare agents (CWA) based on gas-phase photocatalysis. Smirniotis reports that the main objectives of the project were realized during this collaboration. An important benefit of this project is that the team established a solid foundation to support future research in the area of photocatalytic destruction of CWA. Smirniotis and Vorontsov have produced two publications as a result of this visit. The first, "Vibrofluidized- and Fixed-Bed Photocatalytic Reactors: Case of Gaseous Acetone Photooxidation," has been accepted for publication in Chemical Engineering Science. The second, "Photocatalytic Destruction of Gaseous Diethyl Sulfide over TiO2," is in preparation for submission to Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, 2000. On January 31, 2000 Smirniotis and Evgueni Savinov (another collaborator from the Boreskov Institute) presented to the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium a research plan to support collaborative effort for the destruction of CWA. The proposal was awarded over $300,000 by the Science for Peace Programme of NATO to support research on photodestruction of CWA. In addition to this impressive achievement, Smirniotis has also recently received a Young Investigator Program award in the amount of $150,000 from the U.S. Department of the Army.