She will receive the 2001 Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society at its 221st national meeting in San Diego. Benzene, methylene chloride and such solvents are useful in making plastic, detergents, pharmaceuticals and other products, but can damage health or the environment. Industry has used methylene chloride to decaffeinate coffee, for example, but now Kraft Foods Inc. uses supercritical carbon dioxide, which is much more benign, said Brennecke. But to apply such new techniques in the field, one must understand them first down to their very molecules, she added. Called a local composition effect, reactants actually cluster around each other in supercritical fluids.
Liquids are too dense, so molecules can get in the way.
And in regular gases, the molecules are too far apart to find each other easily. With a chemical engineer for a father, Brennecke said she knew ever since she was young that she wanted to be one too. Brennecke received her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1984 and her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1989. She is a member of the ACS industrial and engineering chemistry divisions.