Lubrizol renews partnership with University of Pittsburgh

Since 2014, Lubrizol Corporation has maintained a singular partnership with the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh – providing funding that encourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking among faculty and students while helping Lubrizol develop new initiatives that help to transform the additive and lubrication industry. This “innovation collaboration” is now ready to begin a new chapter in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering with a three-year, nearly USD1 million renewal.

The original four-year, USD1.4 million alliance with the Wickliffe, Ohio-based chemical company, leveraged advancements in manufacturing processes, more than USD9 million in external funding, and support for nearly 30 graduate and postdoctoral students.

“The U.S. chemical industry is traditionally risk-averse, and innovation takes a long time to root. Lubrizol however understood that supporting research on targeted projects with a university partner could yield dividends that might not be possible in-house,” said Steven R. Little, distinguished professor and chair, Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Beyond funding, Lubrizol has also shared its engineers as instructors and mentors, so not only are we developing new ideas and processes, but we’re also graduating the next generation of chemical engineers.”

Glenn Cormack, Lubrizol’s global processes innovation manager,and current liaison for the Alliance has been involved with the relationship since the inception. He notes the benefits that the collaboration has had for both organizations. 

“The alliance between Pitt and Lubrizol has fundamentally changed how Lubrizol develops new processes. The knowledge and skill set of the faculty and students at Pitt augment our internal capabilities, diving deep into the fundamentals and allowing us to develop and commercialize more safe and reliable processes,” said Cormack. “Working collaboratively has allowed our organizations to access funds that promote rich experiences for students, challenging problems for faculty, and safe and efficient processes for Lubrizol.”

According to Götz Veser, professor and program director, the success of the collaboration’s original mission was further secured in 2017 with an USD8 million award from the Department of Energy’s Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Manufacturing Institute. The DOE program is a five-year, USD70 million commitment to improving energy efficiency and lowering investment requirements for American manufacturers seeking to upgrade processes.  Through the RAPID funding, Lubrizol and Pitt were able to develop prototypes and later install two new, modular processing units at the Wickliffe campus that are more energy- and cost-efficient as well as safer and smaller than conventional processes.

“For the American chemical industry, “bigger has always been better”,” Veser said. “But competitors in Europe and elsewhere found that process intensification – “making more with less” – is key to innovation and growth. Lubrizol’s renewed focus on innovation, supported through the RAPID funding and their own investments, have since helped the company become nimbler and more efficient in its manufacturing processes.”

The alliance is also working to make advancements in decarbonising Lubrizol’s operations and the chemical Industry. Lubrizol has recently partnered with Pitt faculty to tackle research in areas such as the intersection of electrochemistry and process intensification, as well as waste plastic depolymerization and upcycling.

Over the past two years, Lubrizol’s sustainability teams have worked closely with Associate Professor James R. McKone. “The Lubrizol Alliance has afforded us a unique perspective on the opportunities and challenges of decarbonizing specialty chemical manufacturing. We have already identified several potential strategies to reduce global warming emissions by applying recent innovations in electrochemical engineering, and we are excited to continue working with Lubrizol to develop these next-generation chemical reactors.”

Furthermore, Pitt recently agreed to support Lubrizol’s ongoing work with University of Nottingham and University of Warwick in their UKRI sponsored Prosperity Partnership, with the vision of forging closer transatlantic industry-academic partnerships in support of decarbonisation and sustainability. 

“We are excited to engage with Chemical Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh to help drive the uptake of energy resilient processes that will underpin our transition towards functional molecules with minimized environmental impact,” said Peter Licence, PhD, lead investigator for the partnership at Nottingham.

Prosperity Partnership activities including new collaborative links with the McKone group, will explore the atom efficient deployment of thermally efficient flow reactors to drive photochemical and electrochemically mediated processes to enable and underpin electrified chemicals manufacturing at scale.”