Prof. Liang-Shih Fan, the Distinguished University Professor and C. J. Easton Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Ohio State University, delivered the XXIV Zhang Dayu lecture in DICP on Tuesday May 9th. The title of his lecture is“Metal Oxide Reaction Engineering and Chemical Looping Technology for Fossil Energy Conversion”. He introduced the general properties of metal oxide materials for emerging technology applications, and his recent work on the metal oxide reaction engineering application to a novel chemical looping technology platform. He discussed the application of iron-titanium composite materials as oxygen carrier particles to produce syngas, chemicals and liquid fuels using carbonaceous feedstock, the evolution process of the scale-up of this technology platform which involves extensive applications of particle science and technology principles for metal oxide particle synthesis, bench and sub-pilot scale reactor design, and pilot scale plant demonstration. After the lecture, Prof. Rui Cai, the deputy director of DICP, awarded Prof. Liang-Shih Fan the Honored Professorship of DICP. More than 150 staff and students attended this event.
　　 
　　Prof. Fan holds the Einstein Professorship of Chinese Academy of Science, and was visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, Osaka University, Tsinghua University and many other universities. He has published more than 400 papers in international and national journals and has written four books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Taiwan Central Research Institute. In 2008, he was named as one of the “One Hundred Engineers in the Modern Era” by the AIChE. He received the Fluidized Process Recognition Award from the Particle Technology Forum of the AIChE in 1995, Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research from the AIChE in 1996, E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry from American Chemical Society in 2006, AIChE Particle Technology Forum’s Particle Technology Forum Award for Life Time Achievement in 2008, International Pitt Award for Innovation in Coal Conversion presented at the 25th in 2008, and the 67th Institute Lecture of AIChE at its Annual Meeting in Utah, 2015 (Only one is awarded in each annual conference).
　　During his stay, Prof. Fan visited the laboratories in DICP and discussed with DICP scientists on the applications of metal oxides in fossil fuel clean conversion technology.(Text by YE Mao and Image by LIU Wansheng)
　　

China has successfully built the first plant in the world for ethanol production from coal, and has been in operation stably for over two months, Chinese Academy of Sciences said on March 17th.The plant was created by Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum Group, and put into production in January with capacity of 100,000 metric tons of anhydrous ethanol per year. Based on this plant, a factory with capacity of 1000,000 metric tons per year would be built by 2020, said LIU Zhongmin, the deputy director of the institute.The total amount of ethanol in China was 7 million metric tons in 2015, and could not satisfy the needs of China’s industrial and energy. Furthermore, only one third of ethanol, about 2.50 million metric tons of ethanol, was used for fuel ethanol. At the same time, the total amount of ethanol in the world was about 9200 metric tons in 2015.The World’s First Plant for Ethanol Production From Coal Successfully Put Into Operation (Image by LIU Wansheng)At present, most of ethanol in the world was produced by fermentation method with food as raw material, such as corn in USA and sugarcane in Brazil. But this method is not suitable for china because of its massive population and limited arable land. In view of China's abundant coal resources, it is feasible to develop ethanol synthesize technology form coal, which would safeguard the energy and food security of china.As we all know that ethanol is a green fuel and can be used for versatile as gasoline additives. The gasoline with 10% ethanol could effectively reduce about 1/3 pollutant emission. It is an environmentally friendly fuel.For decades, scientists around the world have been studying how to synthesize ethanol from fossil fuel, coal, but cannot overcome it. The method by methanol, dimethyl ether and methyl acetate to produce ethanol is an Innovative way, and can gain anhydrous ethanol directly with cheap catalysts. (Text by ZHU Wenliang and Image by LIU Wansheng)Dr. LU XinyiDalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, China,Tel: 86-411-84379201E-mail: luxinyi@dicp.ac.cn 

　　A team of Chinese scientists announced on Jan. 15 that they have developed a new bright VUV FEL light source, the Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS), which can deliver world's brightest FEL light in an energy range from 8 to 24 eV, making it unique of the same kind that only operates in the VUV region.
　　Vacuum Ultra Violet (VUV) light sources are especially useful for sensitive detection of atoms, molecules and clusters. It can also be used to probe valence electronic structures of all kinds of materials.
　　The development of high gain free electron lasers (FEL) has captured great attentions in the scientific community in the last decade. It can provide by far the brightest light sources from VUV to X-ray region, where conventional laser technology cannot reach.
　　Recently, a series of high gain FEL light source facilities in the X-ray and soft X-Ray region have been successfully developed in the world (LCLS, USA; SACLA, Japan; FLASH, Germany; and FERMI, Italy), with a few others currently under development. The great success of the LINAC based Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center gave scientists great hopes to make new scientific discoveries in many frontier research areas with these facilities.
　　However, no dedicated high gain VUV FEL light source facility for basic research has been developed in the world thus far. Led by Prof. YANG Xueming (Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, DICP) and Profs. ZHAO Zhentang and WANG Dong (Shanghai Institute of Applied Source, SINAP), the team of scientists and engineers succeeded in developing the DCLS.
　　During the last two months, this team has successfully commissioned the new FEL facility operating in both HGHG and SASE. By applying the undulator tapering technology in the HGHG mode, a photon flux of 1.4x1014 photons per pulse was achieved. The project was started in early 2012 and was a close collaboration between research scientists and engineers from DICP and SINAP (Home Institute of the Shanghai Light Source), two CAS institutes.
　　"VUV FEL light sources have wide applications in the study of basic energy science, chemistry, physics and atmospheric sciences. We expect that the new facility will become a new machine for important scientific discoveries and international scientific collaborations," said YANG Xueming, a member of the CAS.
　　The Dalian Coherent Light Source Facility (Image by DICP)
　　Many institutions in China such as University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Tsinghua University and Institute of High Energy Physic were involved in the development of this FEL facility. This project was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences.(Text by YANG Xueming and Imaged by DICP)
　　Contact:
　　Dr. LU Xinyi
　　Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
　　457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, China,
　　Tel: 86-411-84379201,
　　E-mail: luxinyi@dicp.ac.cn 

　　A team of Chinese scientists announced on Jan. 13 that they have developed a new bright VUV FEL light source, the Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS), which can deliver world's brightest FEL light in an energy range from 8 to 24 eV, making it unique of the same kind that only operates in the VUV region.
　　Vacuum Ultra Violet (VUV) light sources are especially useful for sensitive detection of atoms, molecules and clusters. It can also be used to probe valence electronic structures of all kinds of materials.
　　The development of high gain free electron lasers (FEL) has captured great attentions in the scientific community in the last decade. It can provide by far the brightest light sources from VUV to X-ray region, where conventional laser technology cannot reach.
　　Recently, a series of high gain FEL light source facilities in the X-ray and soft X-Ray region have been successfully developed in the world (LCLS, USA; SACLA, Japan; FLASH, Germany; and FERMI, Italy), with a few others currently under development. The great success of the LINAC based Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center gave scientists great hopes to make new scientific discoveries in many frontier research areas with these facilities.
　　However, no dedicated high gain VUV FEL light source facility for basic research has been developed in the world thus far. Led by Prof. YANG Xueming (Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, DICP) and Profs. ZHAO Zhentang and WANG Dong (Shanghai Institute of Applied Source, SINAP), the team of scientists and engineers succeeded in developing the DCLS.
　　During the last two months, this team has successfully commissioned the new FEL facility operating in both HGHG and SASE. By applying the undulator tapering technology in the HGHG mode, a photon flux of 1.4x1014 photons per pulse was achieved. The project was started in early 2012 and was a close collaboration between research scientists and engineers from DICP and SINAP (Home Institute of the Shanghai Light Source), two CAS institutes.
　　"VUV FEL light sources have wide applications in the study of basic energy science, chemistry, physics and atmospheric sciences. We expect that the new facility will become a new machine for important scientific discoveries and international scientific collaborations," said YANG Xueming, a member of the CAS.
　　The Dalian Coherent Light Source Facility (Image by DICP)
　　Many institutions in China such as University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Tsinghua University and Institute of High Energy Physic were involved in the development of this FEL facility. This project was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences.(Text by YANG Xueming and Imaged by DICP)
　　Contact:
　　Dr. LU Xinyi
　　Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
　　457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, China,
　　Tel: 86-411-84379201,
　　E-mail: luxinyi@dicp.ac.cn 

　　Recently, the methanol to olefin (MTO) unit from Fund Energy (Changzhou) Development Co., Ltd was succeeded in one-time start-up with methanol feed on Dec. 25th, 2016. The on-spec propylene product is produced on Dec. 28th, and on-spec ethylene product is produced on Dec. 29th. This marks a great success in its MTO unit start-up.
　　The methanol to olefin (MTO) unit from Fund Energy (Changzhou) Development Co., Ltd (Imaged by GUO Chengzhong)
　　300 KTA polypropylene project of Fund Energy (Changzhou) Development Co., Ltd. is one of the most important strategic cooperation projects among Jiangsu province, Changzhou Municipal People's Government and Fund Energy Group. This project is located in Changzhou Binjiang economic development zone, covers an area of about 900 mu for Phase I project. The 330 KTA methanol to olefins unit, adopting DMTO technology with IP right of DICP, is the iconic and core unit of this project. It conforms to the national energy development strategy and industry policy, and has important strategic significance both in promoting regional economic development and realizing the diversification of olefin raw materials.
　　So far, twelve MTO commercial plants has started up by using DICP's DMTO technology with total olefin output capacity of 6.46 million tons per year. (Text by ZHANG Qi and Imaged by GUO Chengzhong)

　　On Thursday December 22, the signing ceremony on the cooperative research and development agreement of "Direct, nonoxidative conversion of methane to olefin and aromatics” was held in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Dalian. The joint research and development project was established by DICP, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC). On behalf of the three parties, Prof. YANG Xueming, deputy director of DICP, Ms. WANG Xinge, General Manager of China Huanqiu Contracting & Engineering Corporation (a subsidiary of CNPC) and Dr. Atiah S. Al-Ghamdi, director of catalyst technology of SABIC signed on the cooperative research agreement.
　　Signing Ceremony on the Collaboration Research Agreement of "Direct, Nonoxidative Conversion of Methane to Olefin and Aromatics" (Imaged by LIU Wansheng)
　　The joint project was developed on the basis of the process of the direct and nonoxidative conversion of methane to olefin and aromatics, invented by the team led by Prof. BAO Xinhe. By activating methane under anaerobic conditions and converting methane directly to olefins, aromatics and hydrogen, the process holds advantages over the conventional processes for natural gas conversion, which usually requires high energy consumption and produces high emission. In addition to shortening the reaction route, the process developed by Prof. BAO’s team also does not emit carbon dioxide within the process and the carbon atom efficiency could reach approximately 100%.
　　The process was first reported in the journal, Science, in May 2014, and has since been studied systematically, with a focus on both fundamental scientific questions of the process and the development for industrial technology. A series of breakthroughs have been made in improving the stability of the catalyst, methods for catalyst preparation and the design of new reactor. In March 2016, CNPC, SABIC and DICP have signed a memorandum of cooperation on the development of the process. This official cooperative research and development agreement signed today marks the project has entered the stage for substantive cooperation. The tripartite cooperation could potentially accelerate the industrialization of the technology and thus make contribution to reform the petrochemical industry in China and even the world.(Text by YANG Fan and Imaged by LIU Wansheng)
　　Contact:
　　Dr. LU Xinyi
　　Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
　　457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, China,
　　Tel: 86-411-84379201,
　　E-mail: luxinyi@dicp.ac.cn