沈 阳 化 工 大 学      资 源 化 工 与 材 料 教 育 部 重 点 实 验 室

Key Laboratory on Resources Chemicals and Materials, Ministry of Education​

A center of cutting-edge science and technology on resources utilization

Guangwen Xu

President and Chair Professor of Shenyang University of Chemical Technology (SYUCT); Founder and Director of Key Laboratory on Resources Chemicals and Materials of Ministry of Education. He is a foreign member of the Ukrainian Academy of​ Engineering Sciences, Chief scientist of the National Basic Research Program (973), a member of the National Expert Team for the National High-Technology Development Program (863) and also for the National Key Research and Development Program (2015-2021) of China, an expert receiving the State Council Special Allowance; an Awardee of the “Hundred-Talent Program” of CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences), the Leader of a National Huang Danian Teaching Team, a deputy director of Sub-technical Committee on Coal-to-Chemicals of National Coal Chemical Standardization Technical Committee; a member of the International Advisory Board on Circulating Fluidized Bed, the chair of China-Japan Exchange Working Committee of CIESC (The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China), the chair of the CIESC Division on Engineering Thermochemistry, and the deputy chair of the CIESC Division on Rare Earth Catalysis and Process.


Technological awards and honors

        Dr. Xu graduated from Tsinghua University for his Bachelors in Engineering and Economics in 1991, and from Chinese Academy of Sciences for his Doctor in Engineering in 1996. He has worked in 1996-2006 in Japan and Germany as, in succession, a NEDO industrial researcher in AIST (Japan), an AvH fellow in Technical University Hamburg-Harburg (Germany), and a senior researcher in IHI Corp., Ltd. (Japan), in 2006-2015 as a professor and a team leader in Institute of Process Eng. (IPE) of CAS, and in 2015-2017 as the director of Southwest Research and Design Institute of Chem. Industry, ChemChina Corp., Ltd. He has been the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of a joint venture between British Petroleum (BP) and CAS in 2009-2011, and became a vice president in 2017 and further the president in 2018 of SYUCT.  

        Dr. Xu has, for more than 30 years, been devoted to fundamental studies and applied developments on reaction analysis, conversion technologies and flue gas denitration as well as cleanup require for utilization of solid fuels like coal and biomass. It particularly focuses on control of fuel conversion reactions in relative to pyrolysis to intendedly direct products formation or enhance interactions between /among reactions. The resulting technologies have been well applied to many crucial industries including coking, iron steel, cement, medicine and distilled spirit to form, by far, more than 100 commercial factories or engineering plants, and to have over 100 customers for his innovated research instruments or facilities as well. The created total economic value of such technology applications has reached 5 billion RMB, while it has substantially served for the clean and low-consuming industrial productions of more than 300 billion RMB annually. His research and developments have so far received two China Patent Awards at excellent class from the State Intellectual Property Office and 8 scientific / technical awards at the first class from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Liaoning Province, Sichuan Province, China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF), China National Light Industry Council (CNLIC), China Instrument and Control Society (CICS), and China Association for Instrumental Analysis (CAIA).  

        1. Creation of the so-called micro fluidized bed (MFB) approach for analysis and measurement of quick gas-solid reactions like pyrolysis and cracking. It for the first time realizes the initiation of quick gas-solid reactions via heating of particles in a continuous nearly-plug gas flow so that the available heating rate to sample particles can be over 104 K/s, a rate obviously higher than the best level currently available by the other techniques. A series of micro fluidized bed reaction analyzers (MFBRAs) or devices have been further developed, whilst a national standard entitled “Particles – Reaction measurement – Micro fluidized bed approach” has been also authorized. The analyzers MFBRAs have so far been widely used in more than 100 universities and institutes including the RTI corporation from Korea. The related R&D work has been evaluated as “kick-started the field” of MFB and its applications for reaction analysis.  

        2. Finding of new pyrplysis-based reaction decoupling mechanisms that induce directive formation of products and intendedly enhancement of reaction interactions, and further innovations of the technologies so-called directive pyrolysis and decoupling combustion / gasification of solids fuels. The establishments have essentially resolved the hard problems of in-depth tar abatement for middle- and low-temperature biomass gasification and production of high-quality pyrolysis oil and gas products at high yields and also high temperatures being even over 1000 ℃. About the work more than 30 international patents have been authorized and further well recognized industrial applications of its resultant technologies have been achieved in no less than 14 enterprises or industry parks, as Luzhou Laojiao Corporation, Shandong Buchang Pharmaceuticals Corporation and Haicheng Magnesite Industrial Base for utilization of their generated distilled spirit lees, Chinese herb residues and low-rank coal, respectively. Moreover, the FPInnovations from Canada is evaluating the related gasification technology under an intended technology import ensuring an advanced bioenergy target.

        3. Invention of a kind of highly active paste-type denitration catalyst and also its production technology based on solvothermal dispersion technique, and further of the structured monolith denitration catalyst and its manufacture technology from direct extrusion and molding of the catalyst paste. The acquired new technologies producing monolith have broken actually the conception restriction by the Japan’s development in the 1980s, which has been so widely deployed worldwide in the last 40 years. Besides, successful industrialization of the new technologies have been well implemented to produce now 3000 m3/a monolith catalyst, which, as the product, was readily proven to be highly active in a temperature window of 220-400℃ and be double-fold strong in against attrition. The catalyst, with as well a full process of its utilization for cleanup of flue gases from various industrial furnaces, has been widely applied in many crucial industries like coking, iron steel and thermal boilers. Being the essential technology of the field, now about 90 plants are being in commercial running.

        He has founded the new discipline of “Engineering Thermochemistry”, established the Key Laboratory on Resources Chemicals and Materials of Ministry of Education, launched English journals of Carbon Resources Conversion (CRC) and Resources Chemicals and Materials (RCM), and also been the editors in chief of both CRC and RCM. The journal CRC has its normal publication already for 3 years and is being indexed by Scopus. Prof. Xu has sponsored and also chaired its first series of International Symposium on Gasification and Its Applications (iSGA) in 2008, and this symposium has then continuously organized once in every two years respectively in countries of China, Japan, Canada, Austria, Korea and France. He has given more than 70 invited conference plenaries or keynotes or visiting-topic lectures.​

        He and his team have been granted and also well implemented tens of important R&D projects from MOST, NSFC and CAS. He has been authorized with 50 international patents (Japan, USA, Europe, Canada, Russia, Australia, Mongolia, etc.) and about 80 Chinese invention patents. The number of patents transferred into industries is 22 and that of technical know-hows is over 40. A high value of 70.56 million RMB was evaluated for a single set of technologies when it was transferred to start a joint company. He, as an academic researcher, has written a monography “Fundamentals and Technologies of Decoupling Thermochemical Conversion” (China Science Press) and published 390 articles in many well-known journals such as Applied Catalysis B, AIChE J., Chem. Eng. J., Chem. Eng. Sci., Applied Energy, Environ. Sci. Technol., Bioresource Technol. and a few Chinese ones. The total citations are over 8500 times, and the personal h-index is 47.

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