Thomas Bruno

Biography

Thomas J. Bruno, Ph.D., was group leader in the Applied Chemicals and Materials Division at NIST, Boulder, Colorado before retiring in 2019.  He received his B.S. in chemistry from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Georgetown University.  He served as a National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council postdoctoral associate at NIST, and was later appointed to the staff.  Dr. Bruno has done research fuels, explosives, forensics and environmental pollutants. He was also involved in research on chemical separations, development of novel analytical methods, and novel detection devices for chromatography.  Among his inventions are the Advanced Distillation Curve method (for fuel characterization), and PLOT-cryoadsorption (for vapor sampling).  He has published approximately 270 research papers, 8 books, and has been awarded 10 patents.  He serves as associate editor of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and as Associate Editor for Fuel Processing Technology. Bruno was awarded the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 1986 for his work “on the thermophysics of reacting fluids”, and the Department of Commerce Silver Medal in 2010 for “a new method for analyzing complex fluid mixtures for of new fuels into the U.S. energy infrastructure”. He was named a Distinguished Finalist for the 2011 CO-Labs Governor’s Award for High Impact Research, and received the American Chemical Society Colorado Section Research Award in 2015. He has served as a forensic consultant and/or an expert witness for the U.S. Department of Justice (notably during the federal trial of Terry Nichols for the Oklahoma City bombing), various United States Attorney’s offices, and various offices of the U.S. Inspector General.  He received a letter of commendation from Department of Justice for these efforts in 2002.  He is currently working to develop science and technology education programs for the American judiciary.  In this capacity he serves on the boards of the National Courts and Science Institute, and the Bryson Institute for Judicial Education.  In addition, he was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Library for nine years.  In his spare time, he is an avid and accomplished woodworker (and a less-than-accomplished welder and metal worker), and has hand-built all the furniture in his house.  

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Fuel Characterization

Dr. Bruno has been a leader in the area of fuel characterization throughout his nearly 40 years at NIST.  He initially worked on gaseous mixtures of hydrogen and hydrocarbons and natural gas constituents, developing a direct measurement of hydrogen fugacity.  He and his colleagues developed approaches to study the thermophysical properties of chemically reacting fluids (primarily fuel related), an activity that has continued to the present, with decomposition  kinetics measurements on modern fuels.  Interestingly, this work resulted in the development of one of the world's longest Arrhenius plots (spanning 11 orders of magnitude) for the thermal decomposition of the rocket propellant, RP-1.  Most recently, he introduced the advanced distillation curve (ADC) approach for the characterization of complex fluids (primarily fuels).  This method links thermodynamically consistent boiling temperatures to fluid composition, thus providing a theoretically meaningful basis on which to model fuel volatility.  The method is used in numerous labs worldwide, and the essential components have been commercialized.  To view a brief movie about this method, visit: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude).  He maintains his involvement in fuels research as associate editor of Fuel Processing Technology (Elsevier)

Trace Constituent Analysis:

The importance of trace constituents on the overall properties of complex fluids (such as fuels, bioproducts, etc.) is now well understood.  The contamination the natural gas pipelines with traces of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) was recognized three decades ago, and the effect of PCBs on mixture properties were critical to design separation methods.  Dr. Bruno and his colleagues developed the first concatenated approach to vapor pressure measurement, to rapidly characterize the 209 PCB congeners. This has lead to the multi-station instruments used today.  Related to PCB analyses are our developments of surface energetics measurements.  Beginning with the PCBs, he developed metrology to measure interaction energies of trace fluids on surfaces.  Our Group's extensive work with alternative refrigerants required the development of many trace constituent analytical procedures, standard data and databases.  This work played an important role in the effective development of many of the thermodynamic and transport property models that have been released.  In the area of bioproducts separation, Dr. Bruno and his colleagues made extensive use of supercritical fluid and alternative solvents (including alternative refrigerants) for extraction, resulting in many measurement methods and model development.  He introduced the Sepsol (separator/solvator) device  to simplify extraction and solute stabilization.  

Headspace Analysis:

The chemical analysis of condensed phase constituents can often be simplified by measuring them in the vapor space above their bulk, a concept called headspace analysis.  The method has come a long way since the earliest purge and trap methods were introduced.  Dr. Bruno invented a new approach to headspace sampling: PLOT cryoadsorption.  This method uses a porous layer of sorbent in a capillary column as the trap.  He and his colleagues have shown that quantitative measurements can be obtained (with an uncertainty of 10 %) from a matrix with 10 ppb of the target solute, and a qualitative measurement with only 2 ppb.  They have applied the method to energetic materials, food spoilage and the location of illegally buried corpses.  

Personal Interests

Expert woodworker and cabinetmaker; less-than-expert welder and metal worker

Books

Photos