Eric Suuberg, Brown Engineering Professor and C.V. Starr Professor of Technology and Entrepreneurship, has been selected for the 2024 Distinguished Researcher Award by the Energy and Fuels Division (ENFL) of the American Chemical Society. An ACS award symposium in honor of Suuberg will be held in the Energy and Fuels Division during the ACS fall 2024 national meeting in Denver, Colo.
Criteria for the award includes excellence in basic or applied research in the broadly defined area of energy and fuels chemistry, as evidenced by publications or patents, invention or commercialization of new technologies, and leadership in the research area, as well as contributions to ACS and the Energy and Fuels Division or its predecessors.
Suuberg’s contributions in service to the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry and its successor Energy and Fuels (ENFL) spans more than 30 years. He was the Division Chair, co-organizer of several ACS symposia, and also a long-time Trustee of the Division Trust Fund. In 1999, he was honored with the prestigious Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry for his outstanding contributions to energy-related research. In 2011, he became a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. He served as a Principal Editor of the journal Fuel from 2000 until 2021, and has shaped Fuel into one of the world’s most recognized and trusted sources of scholarship in fuel science.
His research interests have been in the areas of energy and environmental engineering as well as carbon science, and his contributions have focused on both theoretical and experimental aspects of process kinetics and thermodynamics in the chemistry of nitrogen in coal and char (with particular attention given to the carbon/nitric-oxide reactions); kinetics of coal pyrolysis; thermal decomposition of cellulose; and carbon-oxygen reactions. Suuberg’s research laid the foundation for the understanding of NOx formation from solid fuels as a function of pyrolysis and combustion conditions, advancing the science of NOx reactions and mathematical modeling, enabling modelers to increase the theoretical models' sophistication with the increased performance of computer hardware systems. Examples of his environmental research include: research on waste-tire conversion and utilization; unburned carbon in fly-ash; polycyclic aromatics; experiments and modeling of vapor intrusion; mercury capture from combustion flue gas; and indoor air quality.
He has roughly 200 peer-reviewed papers and nine patents.
Suuberg has been at Brown since 1981 and is a founding member of Brown's chemical engineering program. He has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty (2002-2005), Associate Dean of the School of Engineering (2011-12), associate director of the Brown Superfund Program (2005-19), and co-director of the Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (2005-19).