Norman F. Carnahan (born February 27, 1942,
New Iberia, Louisiana
New Iberia (french: La Nouvelle-Ibérie; es, Nueva Iberia) is the largest city in and parish seat of Iberia Parish, Louisiana, Iberia Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The city of New Iberia is located approximately southeast of Lafayette, L ...
) is an American chemical engineer, a Fellow of The
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) is a professional organization for chemical engineers. AIChE was actually established in 1908 to distinguish chemical engineers as a profession independent of chemists and mechanical engineer ...
. He is the Founding Chair of the Upstream Engineering and Flow Assurance (UE&FA) Forum of AIChE. From 2011 - 2019, he served as the AIChE member on the Board of Directors of The Offshore Technology Conference.
Education
His education in science and mathematics began at St. Pius X High School in Houston, Texas, and continued with engineering and science studies at the
University of Houston
The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...
, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 1965. During his undergraduate studies, Professor H. Wm. Prengle guided him in the fundamentals of thermodynamics and equations of state. Upon graduation, he worked with
Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company, officially Dow Inc., is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company is among the three largest chemical producers in the world.
Dow manufactures plastic ...
Research and Development, where he was mentored by Dr. Daniel R. Stull.
In 1968, Carnahan began graduate studies at the
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...
. His graduate advisor was Professor Kenneth Earl Starling. During his graduate studies, he was influenced by Professors Sherrill D. Christian, Jack Cohn, Cedomir Sliepcevich, and by correspondences with Berni Alder, Bill Hoover, E. Brian Smith, and Ben Widom. Carnahan's vision of molecular interactions and fluid behavior was strongly influenced by the works of Johannes Diderik van der Waals and by René Descartes.
Career
His interest in statistical mechanics, physics of fluids, molecular phenomena, and fundamentals of equations of state led to the development of the Carnahan-Starling equation of state. (1969) for the fluid phase of rigid nonattracting spheres, as single components and mixtures (Mansoori-Carnahan-Starling-Leland, 1971)
Upon completion of his doctoral studies at University of Oklahoma, in 1971, he began a long research and teaching association with Professors Riki Kobayashi and Thomas W. Leland, Jr., at Rice University, in Houston, Texas.
In the 1980s, he resumed work on extending the Carnahan-Starling equation of state to systems of rigid nonattracting nonspherical particles. Together with Professor Erich A. Muller, a series of papers were published in which a shape factor concept was incorporated to enable the equation developed for rigid sphere fluids to be extended to describe the fluid phase of many rigid nonattracting nonspherical particles.
[Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2006, Vol:8, , Pages:2619-2623]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carnahan, Norman F.
Living people
1942 births
American chemical engineers
University of Houston alumni
University of Oklahoma alumni
Dow Chemical Company employees
Fellows of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers