2022 HENAAC Awards

Education: Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University; Master’s, Chemical Engineering, Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia); Bachelor’s, Physics, Universidad Industrial de Santander; Bachelor’s, Chemical Engineering, Universidad Industrial de Santander.

 Today, Dr. Cristancho is a research scientist within the oil and gas chemicals business for Dow’s industrial solutions division.  He is responsible for delivering innovations in gas treatment, a critical chemical process technology for the removal of impurities and contaminants from natural gas. He oversees a research portfolio representing over $100 million in earnings for Dow.  This translates to an even greater value for Dow’s customers who rely on his ability to continually improve and innovate this critical product line.

One of Dr. Cristancho’s most important objectives is to bring new gas treating solvents to market that reduce energy consumption and enable emerging decarbonization technologies – areas vital to current and future global energy infrastructure. His contributions to the industry’s understanding of the thermodynamics of fluid phase equilibria in hydrocarbon gasses in particular has been particularly noteworthy.

Fluid phase equilibria is one of the most important disciplines in the field of chemical engineering. It is used to describe the pressure-volume-temperature relationships of gasses in vapor-liquid separation processes and how they relate to corresponding liquid phases. This information is vital to chemical engineers designing separators and separation processes like those used to turn raw oil and gas into usable finished products. Dr. Cristancho’s work is among the most important and commercially impactful in the entire industry.

Outside the lab, Dr. Cristancho has pursued partnerships with professors at prestigious academic and research institutions like Caltech, the National Institute of Standards and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, benefitting both their research and his own ability to overcome technical challenges.

Born, raised and educated in his native Colombia, Dr. Cristancho moved to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. at Texas A&M. He’s active on several prestigious technical committees critical to his industry, and he’s been honored with numerous awards for his achievements at Dow, including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ 2021 Eminent Engineer Award.