The Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award
 

The aim of the Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement
Award is to recognize and honor the most  noteworthy
chemical- engineering technology commercialized anywhere in the world  during the two years prior to a given award year. Chemical  Engineering magazine has awarded this biennial prize  continuously since 1933.

The long and distinguished roster of past winners includes such milestones as Lucite International for its Alpha process for making methyl methacrylate (2009); Cargill Dow LLC: For its production of thermoplastic resin from corn (2003); Monsanto hollow-fiber membranes for gas separation (1981); Union Carbide low-pressure low-density polyethylene (1979); M.W. Kellogg single-train ammonia plants (1967); Linde zeolite adsorbents (1961); Dow Corning silicones (1955), Merck streptomycin (1947); the U.S. synthetic rubber industry (1943) and Standard Oil Development Co. aviation fuels (1939). The most-recent winners' achievements are summarized in the table.

Although the staff of CE organizes and bestows the award, neither the editors nor others associated with the magazine play any role in the selection or judging of the winner. Instead, the winner is selected by a Board of Judges comprised of the nine current chairs of chemical engineering departments at accredited U.S. (5) and EU (3) universities. The nine members of the Board of Judges are, in turn, selected by over a hundred Ch.E. department chairs of accredited U.S. and EU universities. It is this unbiased selection process, combined with a more than 70-year tradition that makes the Award one of the most prestigious honors that a CPI company can receive.

The path to the winner

In a given award year, Chemical Engineering magazine announces its call for nominations in either the January or February issue. Nominations can be submitted by employees at the company being nominated, or by others familiar with the process technology being nominated.

The 500-word nomination summarizes the achievement, as well as spells out the novelty of the technology and the difficulty of the chemical-engineering problems that were encountered and solved. The nomination must specify how, where and when the development reached its initial commercial status during the two years prior to the award year.

After the deadline for nominations has passed (typically mid-to-late April), the Secretary reviews the nominations to make sure they are valid; for instance, that the first commercialization did in fact take place during the two years prior to the award year. Then he or she will submit copies to over 100 senior professors who head accredited university chemical engineering departments and accordingly constitute the Committee of Award. Working independently of each other, each will vote for what he or she considers to be the five best achievements, without ranking them.

The five entries that collectively receive the most votes become the finalists. Each finalist company is then asked to submit a package of more-detailed information; for instance, a description of the teamwork that brought forth the achievement, a fuller description of the technology, performance data, and exhibits of press coverage.

The Secretary sends copies of these packages to a nine-person Board of Judges, which meanwhile has been chosen by and from within the Committee of Award. In late summer, the Chair of that Board will inform the Secretary as to which finalist achievement has been judged the most noteworthy.

The company that developed the technology will then be named the winner of that year’s Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award. The other finalist companies will be designated to receive Honor Awards. The Achievement Award and Honor Awards are bestowed with appropriate ceremony around the end of the year. 

Kirkpatrick Award Winners
 

Year	Winning Companies	Winning Process
1933	Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Co.	Petrochemical syntheses
1935	E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.
1937	Monsanto Co.
1939	Standard Oil Development Co.	For its aviation fuels
1941	Dow Chemical Co.	Magnesium from seawater
1943	American Synthetic Rubber Industry	Rapid wartime commercialization of synthetic rubber
1946	Atomic Bomb Project
1947	Merck & Co.	Large-scale manufacture of streptomycin
1948	Shell Development Co.
1949	Celanese Corp. of America
1951	Phillips Petroleum Co.
1953	Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Co.
1955	Dow Corning Corp.	Silicone products
1957	Contributors to Extractive Metallurgy of Atomic Age Metals
1959	Texaco, Inc.
1961	Linde Co., Div. of Union Carbide Corp.	For its zeolite adsorbents
1963	American Potash & Chemical Corp.
1965	Monsanto Co.
1967	The M.W. Kellogg Co	For its single-train ammonia technology
1969	General Mills, Inc.	Textured protein foods
1971	E.I du Pont Nemours & Co.	Hollow-fiber reverse osmosis
1973	BP Proteins Ltd.
1975	Amoco Oil co.
1977	Union Carbide Corp., Davy Powergas Ltd, and Johnson Matthey & Co.
1979	Union Carbide Corp.	For its low-pressure low-density polyethylene process
1981	Monsanto Co.	For its hollow-fiber membranes for gas separation
1983	Stauffer Chemical Co.
1985	Tennnessee Eastman Co.	Coal-based acetic anhydride
1987	Air Products & Chemicals
1989	Union Carbide Corp.
1991	Amoco Chemical	Anaerobic treatment of process wastewater
1993	BHC	For its streamlined production of ibuprofen
1995	Air Products & Chemicals	For oxygen-based technology enabling efficient recycle of office wastepaper
1997	Membrane Technology and Research	For a system to recover monomer from polyolefin-plant purge streams
1999	CK Witco	For a streamlined process to manufacture organofunctional alkoxysilanes
2001	BOC Group, Inc.	For low-temperature NOx absorption out of fluegases
2003	Cargill Dow LLC	For its production of thermoplastic resin from corn
2005	Chevron Phillips Chemical	For significant advances in alpha-olefins technology
2007	Axens	For its Esterfip-H process for making biodiesel
2009	Lucite International UK Ltd.	For its Alpha process for making methyl methacrylate (MMA)
2011	VELOCYS, INC. and OXFORD CATALYSTS GROUP	Small Scale, Modular Synthetic Fuel Technology

Honor Companies

* Click on year or name of company for more information on winning process and honor process.