E. Zeynep Ayla

E. Zeynep Ayla, Ph.D., CFEI

Senior Staff Consultant

Dr. Zeynep Ayla is a chemical engineer with expertise in the areas of catalysis, reaction engineering, and fire and explosion investigation. With an experimental background, she has strong skills in catalytic synthesis and characterization, kinetic analysis, batch and flow reactor design, gas chromatography, and UV-Vis, FTIR, and Raman spectroscopy. At ESi, she specializes in fire, explosion, and chemical release investigations, in addition to catalyst performance in industrial systems, dust hazard analysis, industrial chemical process arbitration and patent cases, and consumer product litigation including fuel dispensing systems.

Prior to joining ESi, Dr. Ayla was a graduate student researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral dissertation centered around understanding structural, kinetic, and mechanistic differences in metal oxide catalysts with varying reaction rates. She developed skills in catalyst design and characterization, reaction engineering, reactor design, and heat and mass transfer. More specifically, she has designed and built a reactor system for gas-phase epoxidation with hydrogen peroxide, developed kinetic models to understand substrate activation to form active forms of oxygen for oxidation reactions, and optimized time-resolved in-situ spectroscopy to observe active intermediates formed on reactive surfaces.

Publications

  • Influence of Ti-incorporated Zeolite Topology and Pore Condensation on Vapor Phase Propylene Epoxidation Kinetics with Gaseous H2O2, Angewandte Chemie International Edition , January 2024
  • Effects of Solvent-Pore Interaction on Rates and Barriers for Vapor Phase Alkene Epoxidation with Gaseous H2O2 in Ti-BEA Catalysts, ACS Catalysis 2023, 13, 6430-6444, December 2023
  • Identity of the Metal Oxide Support Controls Outer Sphere Interactions that Change Rates and Barriers for Alkene Epoxidations at Isolated Ti Atoms, Journal of Catalysis 2022, 411, 167-176, January 2022
  • The shape of water in zeolites and its impact on epoxidation catalysis, Nature Catalysis, 4, 9, 797-808, January 2021
  • Reactive Species and Reaction Pathways for the Oxidative Cleavage of 4-Octene and Oleic Acid with H2O2 over Tungsten Oxide Catalysts, ACS Catalysis,2021, 11, 3137-3152, January 2021
  • Alkene Epoxidations with H2O2 over Groups 4-6 Metal-Substituted BEA Zeolites: Reactive Intermediates, Reaction Pathways, and Linear Free-Energy Relationships, ACS Catalysis 2020, 11, 139-154, January 2020
  • Effects of Hydrofluoric Acid Concentration on the Density of Silanol Groups and Water Adsorption in Hydrothermally Synthesized Transition Metal Substituted Silicalite-1, Chemistry of Materials, 2020, 32, 17, 7425-7437, January 2020
  • Catalytic Consequences of Oxidant, Alkene, and Pore Structure on Alkene Epoxidations within Titanium Silicates, ACS Catalysis, 2020, 10, 17, 10169-10184, January 2024
  • Cooperative Effects between Hydrophilic Pores and Solvents: Catalytic Consequences of Hydrogen-Bonding on Alkene Epoxidation in Zeolites, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2019, 141, 7302 – 7319, January 2019
  • Engineering a Synthetic, Catabolically Orthogonal Coculture System for Enhanced Conversion of Lignocellulose-Derived Sugars to Ethanol, ACS Synthetic Biology, 2019, 8, 5, 1089 – 1099, January 2019

ESi's expertise spans dozens of industries and specializations organized across several practice groups, each staffed by dozens of in-house experts with the technical knowledge, hands-on expertise, and courtroom experience required to execute projects for and with our clients from start to finish.

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