Colin Snape Receives Storch Award In Fuel Chemistry

Colin Snape, of the University of Nottingham, has received the 2006 Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry, sponsored by the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry and Elsevier.

He is founder and director of the Nottingham Fuel & Energy Centre and research director of the School of Chemical, Mining & Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham in England. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland.

Snape has been involved in fuel science for more than 30 years. In the early 1980s, he investigated the process of hydropyrolysis as a route for direct coal liquefaction. He was the first to demonstrate that high yields comparable to those achieved in solvent-mediated hydroliquefaction could be obtained with the use of suitable dispersed catalysts.

Snape later developed an interest in solid-state NMR and showed that cross-polarization could discriminate heavily against aromatic carbons. He and his colleagues used in situ ¹H NMR to quantify condensed-phase phenomena in polymer degradation for the first time.

His research currently focuses on aspects of biomass cofiring in combustion and the use of thin sections of coal as a source of high-resolution climatic data.

He has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was awarded the Peter H. Given Lectureship in Coal Science by Pennsylvania State University.