GTI’s Terry Marker to be Honored with Prestigious Don Klass Award at upcoming tcbiomass2022

GTI Senior Institute Engineer and Bioenergy Initiatives Manager, Terry Marker, will be presented with the prestigious 2022 Don Klass Award for Excellence in Thermochemical Conversion Science on April 20th at tcbiomass2022, being held in Denver, Colorado and co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The award is a tribute to the notable Dr. Donald L. Klass, who was president and one of the original founders of the Biomass Energy Research Association (BERA).

Ms. Marker has five decades of experience in the bio-renewable, petroleum, and petrochemical fields, where she has gained a reputation for her passion and technical creativity. She is a prodigious inventor with 79 U.S. patents. She earned a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Illinois.

“Throughout her career, Terry has created and fostered non-incremental, breakthrough process technologies in the field of thermochemical conversion,” says Vann Bush, tcbiomass2022 conference chair and GTI’s Vice President, Research Operations. “Like all prior recipients, her career embodies the consistent technical excellence, dedication, and legacy we search for in Don Klass awardees.”

Ms. Marker worked 20 years at UOP (now Honeywell UOP), 10 years at Amoco (now BP), and 5 years at ARCO. She was team leader of the UOP/Hydro MTO process which converts methanol to olefins and today produces three million tons/year of ethylene and propylene from methanol. Ms. Marker also helped to commercialize UOP’s Ethermax process for making methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and their Oxypro process which makes isopropyl ether, both gasoline additives.

For the past 25 years, she has focused her research on conversion of biomass to fuels and authored the DOE report “Opportunities for Bio-renewables in Oil Refineries.” Ms. Marker is one of the inventors of UOP’s Ecofining process which converts vegetable oil, fats, and grease into diesel and jet fuel through processes known as hydrodeoxygenation and hydroisomerization. There are 20 Ecofining units in use throughout the world, producing much of the renewable aviation fuel available today.

Ms. Marker has served in her role at GTI since 2008. She is the principal inventor and an early team leader of the IH2^® process developed at GTI, which converts cellulosic biomass to drop-in transportation fuels. The IH2^® process is licensed to Shell Catalyst and Technologies and is being demonstrated at Shell’s Technology Center in Bangalore, India at a 5 ton/day scale with a range of waste feedstocks from forests, agriculture, and urban centers.

She is also the principal investigator for GTI’s novel Cool GTL^SM technology, which converts biogas or CO₂, along with hydrogen, to drop-in liquid fuels. The Cool GTL process is her latest innovation that contributes to closing the carbon cycle and efficiently producing energy products with very low to negative carbon footprints.

With a lifetime dedicated to developing technical innovations that are producing critically important clean and renewable fuels being used now and long into the future, Ms. Marker is a truly deserving recipient of this award.