Akira Tomita honored with Storch Award

AKIRA TOMITA of Tohoku University, in Japan, is the 2009 recipient of the Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry, sponsored by the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry and Elsevier. The award, consisting of $5,000 and a plaque, is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to research in the field of fuel science.

Tomita’s contributions to the field include the understanding of the role of Coulombic interactions in adsorption, the understanding of the carbon-hydrogen reaction, and the scientific and engineering aspects of catalytic coal and carbon gasification. He is a pioneer in advancing the understanding of gasification mechanisms by tandem use of the most advanced experimental and theoretical techniques, combining thermal desorption and transient kinetics with ab initio computational chemistry.