Gilbert Froment

Gilbert F. Froment (born 1 October 1930) is a Belgian Professor Emeritus of chemical engineering at Ghent University, Belgium, and a research professor at Texas A&M University. His career specialized in the fields of kinetic and chemical reaction engineering studies, including its application in process industry.

Froment was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 for the application of fundamental approaches in the analysis of complex, industrially important processes and reactors.

Education
He received a chemical engineering degree from Ghent University in 1953 and earned a Ph.D. in the same field in 1957.

Following his degrees, he spent a year with Professor Schoeneman at the Institute for Chemical Technology in Darmstadt, Germany. The following year, he obtained a fellowship from the Belgian-American Educational Foundation enabling a year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he worked with Professors Olaf Hougen, K.M. Watson, and C.C. Watson on catalytic kinetics and the modeling of catalyst beds.

Tenure at the Ghent University
In 1959, he returned to Ghent University as an associate professor. In 1968, he became full professor and director of the Laboratorium voor Petrochemische Techniek until 1996, when he became emeritus professor of the Ghent University. Froment's objective was to design or simulate industrial catalytic reactors using mathematical models.

Froment's contributions to catalyst research have been significant in addressing challenging problems related to particle transport and deactivation. His work, spanning from the 1980s onward, has played a crucial role in advancing the understanding of these complex phenomena.

One of the notable areas of his research has been the study of transport mechanisms within catalyst particles. In contrast to earlier approaches that treated catalyst particles as single pores or pseudo-continua, Froment recognized the importance of retaining network topology in modeling. He particularly emphasized the preservation of network connectivity, especially in cases where pores could be obstructed due to factors like metal deposition or coke formation.

An area where he has demonstrated pioneering work is in understanding catalyst deactivation caused by coke formation. He approached this phenomenon on multiple levels, delving into the behavior of active sites or clusters, the intricate network of pores within particles, and the broader context of the reactor. His exploration led him to employ advanced techniques such as Bethe and percolation networks to describe mass transport and reactions within catalyst particles. These methodologies proved to be a significant departure from conventional tortuosity factor-based descriptions.

Another major area where Froment has been active is thermal cracking for olefin production. He started research in this area already in 1959, stressing the derivation of accurate kinetic data from experimentation in tubular flow reactors and developing the equivalent reactor volume concept introduced by Hougen and Watson. Continuing this work through the decades led to more advanced and detailed reaction kinetics integrated within reactor models with transport phenomena. This impressive effort, combining heat transfer and three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics calculations, has led to the most advanced furnace models in use today.

Tenure at Texas A&M
Various universities in the US were interested in hiring him upon his retirement from Ghent University. He finally opted to join Texas A&M University, where he had several friends, as a "research professor" so that he could concentrate on research and a few seminars for graduate students. Between 1999 and 2015 he directed 9 Ph.D. students and several postdocs from all over the world. His research concentrated on the application of the Single Event concept, which he had developed in Belgium, to the complex refining processes such as FCC, hydrocracking, alkylation, and petrochemical processes such as MTO (methanol-to-olefins) and oligomerization. Since 2015, he concentrated on the kinetics and design of the Fischer-Tropsch process.

Travel
He has established a record of excellence for instruction of chemical engineering and reaction engineering. His dedication to teaching has led him all over the world as a visiting professor at other universities. Including Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (1967–77) and Université Libre de Bruxelles (1967–69), and at Yale University (1969), University of Houston (1973 and 1981), Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina (1977), University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1981), Universidad de Salta (since 1983), University of Santa Fe, Argentina (1983), and University of Stanford (1984). He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Delaware (1980–85).

Textbook: Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design
In collaboration with his co-author, Dr. Kenneth Bischoff, Froment published a highly influential textbook entitled, "Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design," in 1970. A second edition was published in 1990, followed by a third edition in 2010. The textbook has been utilized around the world in the instruction of chemical reaction engineering within chemical engineering curricula. The impact of the textbook has been attributed to the extensive background of Froment and Bischoff, which provides context into the connections between the macro- and micro-scale phenomena of transport and reaction engineering.

Chemical Reaction Engineering
Froment has been active in professional organizations and supportive of the chemical reaction engineering community. He is the founder of the Chemical Engineering Section of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Ingenieursvereniging and a member of the Working Party on Chemical Reaction Engineering of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering since 1966 and of the Working Party of the Use of Computers in Chemical Engineering since 1968. He has organized many congresses such as those on "Catalyst Deactivation" and "Large Chemical Plants." He chaired ISCRE-14 in Bruges, Belgium. He has also been active as an editor. He was co-editor of Chemical Engineering Science from 1965 until 1996 and of Chemical Reaction Engineering Reviews since 1971 and was a member of the editorial boards of Bulletin des Societes Chimiques Belges, Applied Catalysis, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Chemical Engineering Reviews, Revista Latino-Americana de Ingenieria Quimica, and Energie Primaire.

Academic accomplishments
With over 70 Ph.D. students and over 300 scientific publications, Froment has had a significant impact on the science and the practice of Chemical Reaction Engineering. Froment has been widely recognized, in Belgium and abroad, for his role as an educator and a scientist. He has received the Frederick Swarts Award for Applied Chemistry of the Royal Belgian Academy (1958), the National Alumni Award of the Belgian University Foundation (1966), the Prix Cornez de la Province du Hainaut (1976), and the R. H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (1984). He received a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa degree from Technion, Haifa, Israel (1984), and was elected a member of the Académie Royale Belge des Sciences d'Outre mer in 1981 and a member of the Koninklijke Academie van België, Class of Science, in 1988. In 1999, he was awarded the Villermaux-medal of European Federation of Chemical Engineering. Also in 1999, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2007, Froment was awarded the Neal R. Amundson Award for Excellence in Chemical Reaction Engineering at the NASCRE Symposium in Houston, TX.

Key publications
Gilbert has helped to rutland wrote numerous journal articles describing significant advances in chemical reaction engineering which includes but is not limited to: