Rodney H. Banks is an American industrial chemist and a research fellow at Nalco Holding Company in Naperville, Illinois now a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecolab Incorporated. His inventions have greatly improved the control of industrial water treatment.
Background
Banks was born in Long Beach, California on January 14, 1953 and later moved with his family to Maryland. His father Mark worked as a chemist for the United States. Defense Department in Washington, District of Columbia, inspiring the younger Banks to pursue the same field
Education
Banks attended Johns Hopkins University, graduating with a bachelor"s degree in chemistry in 1975.
Career
In 2011, Banks received the Perkin Medal for his work from the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry, the highest award for applied chemistry in the United States. Banks moved to the Chicago area in 1980, working briefly as a post-doctoral student at Argonne National Laboratory on x-ray photoemission spectroscopy properties of neptunium oxides before joining Nalco Chemical Company as a research scientist In the mid-1980s, Banks and other Nalco researchers identified opportunities for improved monitoring and control of water used in many industrial systems, especially in cooling towers, for both commercial and office buildings and in industrial plants such as paper mills, oil refineries, automotive plants and steel mills.
Banks" work involved using chemical and mechanical sensors for improved monitoring and control.
Banks has created various electrochemical, optical, quartz crystal microbalance-based sensors to measure chemical treatment levels, corrosion, scale and microbial fouling. He holds more than 30 United States. patents.