Background
Frederick J. Krambeck received his Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree from City College of New York in 1963 and his Ph.D. in the same discipline at City University of New York in 1968. He designed nuclear reactors at Westinghouse during 1963-1964 in Pittsburgh, where he met his wife, Betty. During his Ph.D. studies he enjoyed teaching undergraduate Chemical Engineering, including a year as a full-time lecturer.
After the Ph.D. degree he joined Mobil Oil Company at their Central Research Laboratory in the Princeton, NJ area, where he co-discovered thermal nitric oxide decomposition technology and elucidated the mathematical structure of chemical kinetics. Moving on to Mobil’s Applied Research Laboratory in Paulsboro, NJ he led the development of Mobil’s kinetic reforming model, an early example of the practical application of large-scale chemical kinetics to industrial process simulation.
Other projects included development and modeling of the Mobil/UOP fast fluidized bed FCC regenerator and kinetic analysis and modeling of various other processes. He then assumed a variety of research management and planning positions in Mobil, during which time he led several successful developments, including closed FCC reactor cyclones, the fluidized-bed Methanol-to-Gasoline process, and a joint program with Phillips petroleum to develop an additive to reduce the potential hazards of the HF alkylation process.
More recently he has been a Senior Consultant at Mobil and then ExxonMobil, where he participated in developing a company R&D strategy for carbon dioxide stabilization. He also played a key role in implementation of large-scale optimization technology. Since retiring from that organization he has continued to serve as a consultant.
He was a Founding Director of the Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE, Co-Chairman of the second Engineering Foundation Conference on Chemical Reaction Engineering, Chairman of the Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering Subcommittee of the AIChE Research Committee, organizer of the Mobil Workshop on Chemical Reactions in Complex Mixtures, and a member of the Technical Committee for the 16th International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering. He has been a Director and Treasurer of AIChE, a member of the National Research Council Panel on alternative technologies for disposal of assembled chemical weapons, and the NRC panel for novel approaches to carbon sequestration.
Since retiring from ExxonMobil in 2001 he has been a Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught a graduate course in Chemical Reaction Engineering and is working on applying chemical kinetic principles to biochemical systems. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an AIChE Fellow.