December 20, a signing ceremony was held in Beijing Xiangshan Yihe hotel to set up the joint R & D center between Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and Baoding Fengfan Co. Ltd.. Aisheng Feng, deputy director of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Yong Li, general manager of Baoding Sailing Co., representing both sides signed a bilateral strategic cooperation agreement to jointly build R & D center and technology development contract agreement. Subsequently, Aisheng Feng and Baosheng Liu, Chairman of the board of Baoding Sailing Feng Co., Ltd., unveiling the joint R & D center together. Baoding Fengfan Co. Ltd. deputy general manager Zhijun Zhen, deputy general manager and chief engineer Yufeng Zhang, Technology Management Department manager Mengyang Wang, Planning Department manager Haitao Liu, Basic Research Department manager Baoguang Qu, office director Yulong Guo, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics deputy science and technology Director Zhang Yu, Chief Researcher and DICP-Fengfan joint R & D center director Huamin Zhang, Energy Storage Department director Xianfeng Li, Advanced Battery Group director Hongzhang Zhang, Researcher Jingwang Yan, attended the signing ceremony.
　　 
　　Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics & Baoding Fengfan Co. Ltd. Set Up Joint R & D Center in Beijing（Photo by Zheng ZHAO）
　　In the future, both sides will take good use of the platform of the Joint R & D center to strengthen the close cooperation, to carry out extensive technological innovation and technology transfer, to finally promote the scientific research and industrialization of advanced batteries.(Text by Hongzhang ZHANG/Photo by Zheng ZHAO)

　　On Dec. 15th,2015, Shenhua (Yulin) MTO plant began methanol feeding at 8:58 am, and the mixed-olefins gas started to be compressed into the Light Olefin Recovery Section at 11:38 am, this marked the successful start-up of Shenhua (Yulin) MTO project. This successful start-up again proved DMTO a advanced, mature, and reliable technology with completely independent intellectual property right of China.
　　Since the first DMTO commercial plant Shenhua (Baotou) started up, Shenhua (Yulin) MTO plant is the ninth DMTO commercial plants on operation. The nine DMTO commercial plants on operation have reached a total olefin capacity of 5.2 million ton per year.(Text/ Photo by Project Department of SYN)
　　Shenhua (Yulin) MTO Project Commissions Successfully (Photo by Project Department of SYN)

　　Recently, a low-temperature DeNOx industrial demonstration unit has been successfully carried out in Jiangsu Yizhou Coking Co., Ltd. for removal of NOx from coke oven flue gas. This unit was loaded with a kind of high-efficiency low-temperature DeNOx catalyst developed by DNL0901 from DICP.
　　NOx emissions from coke oven flue gas have been a technological problem in the coking industry. Since 2013, DNL0901 has been developing SCR catalyst for NOx removal from coke oven flue gas. In 2014, an industrial pilot SCR system was commissioned and an instant operation success was achieved at Baofeng Energy Ltd, Yinchuan, Ningxia province. This efficient SCR catalyst showed a very high and stable NOx reduction efficiency with 98~99% during 1200 hours running. Based on these research works, DNL0901 from DICP, Jiangsu WOTE Environmental Protection Equipment Engineering Co. Ltd and Jiangsu Yizhou Coking Co., Ltd join together to establish the low-temperature DeNOx industrial demonstration unit for reduction of NOx emissions from the coke oven.
　　At 27 November 2015, this unit was put into operation successfully. According to the on-line CEMS system monitoring data, This efficient SCR catalyst showed a very high and stable NOx reduction efficiency with 90~95% and the concentration of NOx in effluent maintained less than70 mg/m3.
　　The Industrial Demonstration SCR System for Coking Process is Successfully Commissioned（Photo by Hao CHENG） 
　　The successful operation of the unit has a great demonstration effect for the NOx reduction in the coking industry. The promotion of this technology will provide annual emission reduction of millions of tons of NOx and make a great contribution to atmospheric environmental management. （Text/ Photo by Hao CHENG）
　　

　　In 18th December, 2015, the energy storage technology of the vanadium flow battery from Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd has won the 2015 “China’s Original Technology Award” on the 15th China Economic Forum. Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics has technology investment in Rongke Power. The prize-giving words are "the global leader in the energy storage technology of vanadium flow battery and the international standard maker in the industry”. The China Economic Forum is organized by China Daily, China Economic Weekly and Torch Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology.（Text/ Photo by WANG Xiaoli）
　　 
　　The Energy Storage Technology of Vanadium Flow Battery from Rongke Power Has Won the 2015 “China's Original Technology Award” on the 15th China Economic Forum (Photo by WANG Xiaoli)
　　

　　Hydrogen, as a clean, efficient and renewable energy, attracts great attention in recent years. The production of hydrogen through electricity-driven water splitting is an important method to realize the low-cost industrialization. The oxygen evolution reaction (OER), as a key half-reaction involved in water splitting, is kinetically sluggish and largely hinder the overall efficiency of water splitting. Current commercial OER catalysts still rely on the use of ruthenium (Ru) and iridium (Ir) oxides, but they are not suitable for large-scale applications because of their scarcity and high cost. Consequently, tremendous research efforts have been devoted to developing low-cost and earth-abundant non-precious-metal catalysts. Recently, on the basis of previous studies towards nano-carbon catalysis, associate Prof. Dehui Deng and Prof. Xinhe Bao etc. from SKLC, DICP have innovated the preparation strategy to directly synthesize single layer graphene encapsulating uniform earth-abundant 3d transition metal nanoparticles, such as Fe, Co, Ni and their alloys via a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process in a confined channel of mesoporous silica (SBA-15). The single layer graphene encapsulating FeNi alloy (FeNi@NC) showed excellent OER activity and high durability, which even exceed that of commercial IrO2 catalyst, showing great potential to replace precious metal catalysts in OER. This work has recently been published as a communication in Energy & Environmental Science (Energy Environ. Sci., 2016, DOI: 10.1039/C5EE03316K). 
　　DICP Researchers Innovate the Preparation Strategy to Directly Synthesize Single Layer Graphene Encapsulating Uniform Earth-abundant 3D Transition Metal Nanoparticles(Photo by Ying Shi and Xiaoju Cui) 
　　DFT calculations and experiments indicate that the single atomic thickness of graphene shell immensely promotes the electron transfering from the encapsulated metals to the graphene surface, which efficiently optimizes the electronic structure of the graphene surface and therefore triggers the OER activity of the inert graphene surface. Also, the graphene shell could efficiently prevent the corrosion of 3d TMs from the harsh environment. The concept of “electron penetration”, which describes the above mentioned catalytic process, was first proposed in 2013 by this group (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 371). It has been widely accepted by the international counterparts and described vividly as “chainmail for catalyst”. In recent years, this group has made several important progress towards this concept, e.g. they found that the thickness of graphene shells (chainmail) can remarkably affect the electron penetration process, the catalytic oxygen reduction activity (J. Mater. Chem. A 2013, 1, 14868) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 2100) by experiments and DFT calculations. Besides, they proposed the HER mechanism on the graphene surface (Energy Environ. Sci. 2014, 7, 1919). They also collaborated with other research group to study the graphene shell encapsulating FeNi catalyst as the counter electrode material of dye-sensitized solar cells and found that the catalyst showed superior activity than the precious Pt in the reduction of I3- (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7023). In addition, with the aid of soft X-ray imaging technique, the electronic structure of the graphene surface modulated by the active metals was directly observed (Chem. Sci., 2015, 6, 3262). Based on the experimental data and theoretical calculations, the nature of the interaction between graphene surface and 3d metals was illustrated deeply, and a relatively complete concept was gradually formed.
　　These works are supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (2011. iChEM). (by Ying Shi and Xiaoju Cui)

　　Solar hydrogen production via a photocatalytic process has been drawing great attention in recent years due to the increasing concerns on energy and environmental problems. The requirement for a photocatalytic reaction on semiconductor-based photocatalyst is that the energy of incident light is larger than the band gap of the photocatalyst (Eλ Eg), and then electrons and holes can be generated and separated for reduction and oxidation reactions, respectively. Until now, almost all the reported photocatalysts are semiconductor-based materials with a suitable band structure, but none of the insulators can be used for photocatalytic hydrogen production because their band gaps are too large to be excited by the usual UV and visible light sources.
　　Recently, a new progress about the photocatalytic hydrogen production on an insulator has been made by the Solar Energy Division (DNL 16) at DICP, led by Prof. Can Li. The work has been recently published in《Scientific Reports》（Rengui Li and Can Li et al, Sci. Rep., 2015, 5, 13475; http://www.nature.com/articles/srep13475）.
　　Using CH3OH molecule as a hole scavenger, they found that a considerable amount of H2 can be generated at a quartz surface using light with energy far outside the electronic absorbance range of the CH3OH-H2O solution and the excitation energy of the quartz. This particular H2 production was further confirmed using two different lasers (266 nm and 355 nm) as light sources. Interesting, the results showed that the incident light with a wavelength up to 400 nm can even induce H2 production from the CH3OH-H2O solution at quartz surface. It was generally believed that CH3OH itself cannot contribute to H2 production because it does not absorb any light from commonly used light sources, so this process should not occur in principle via either conventional photocatalysis or a photochemical process. They found that when some insulator oxide (SiO2 or Al2O3) particles onto which Pt has been deposited as reduction cocatalyst were added to the reaction solution, the H2 production can be strongly enhanced, conforming that the H2 was produced from the reduction of protons by the photogenerated electrons.
　　The Photo-induced Hydrogen Production Can Take Place at An Insulator Surface(Photo by LI Rengui)
　　Further characterizations by photoluminescence (PL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) technology suggested that there are electrons present in the defect states of quartz, which could be excited from the valence band of insulators (e.g., quartz reactor, SiO2 or Al2O3), which could be excited by the light with the incident energy smaller than its bandgap. The traditional quartz is made of SiO2 that is calcined at high temperatures (usually over 700 °C), and some defect sites could be unavoidable generated on the quartz surface after calcination at high temperatures, and these defect sites can act as electron acceptors, making excitation from the valance band of quartz to these states possible. This process will be responsible for the H2 production via electron-proton coupling from the CH3OH-H2O solution at the insulator surface. As far as we know, this example is the first to show that H2 production can be achieved at an insulator surface, demonstrating the possibility of photo-induced H2 production on insulators. Our work demonstrates that photo-induced H2 production can take place on insulator surfaces, which are commonly believed to be inert, and will shed light on the surface nature of insulators.
　　This work was financially supported by NSFC and MOST 973 program. (Text/ Photo by Li Rengui)