A historical review of the technological innovations occurred in refining and petrochemical industry reveals that，an original innovation can only be achieved on a basis of a scientific knowledge shift of the related technology. Innovative conception originates from association of ideas, association of ideas comes from wide range of studies and being knowledgeable，and also from collective wisdom. The path from verifying conception to transforming into novel industrial technology is always rough and rugged. Teamwork is extremely important，not only in intensifying collaboration and making each person do his best，but also in the spirit of persistence in overcoming various difficulties. The present article illustrates above viewpoints through case studies of technology innovations either domestic or abroad in refining and petrochemical industry

Complex systems with multi-scale structures are widely encountered in chemical engineering. As a critical link between elemental interactions and system behavior，meso-scale structures are important for the quantification and optimization of the relevant processes. Meso-scale structures also present a common feature in different research areas such as chemistry，material，biology，physics and system science，which calls for an interdisciplinary research effort. This paper tries to elucidate the significance，challenges and methods of meso-scale simulation for chemical engineering in the background of multi-scale research.

Micro-structured chemical system is a new technology in chemical processes. It has been applied in many areas，such as multiphase separation and chemical reaction，for its good mass and heat transport properties. The researches about micro-structured chemical systems are focused on micro-dispersion，micro-mixing，multiphase transport and reaction application. This review describes some discussions on those critical issues and explores some potential research areas in the future.

Microchemical engineering is a promising leading discipline of modern chemical engineering，which focuses on the study of fluid flow，heat and mass transport phenomena and reaction principles under micro spatio-temporal scales. This systematical review concentrates on recent advances in the flow hydrodynamic of single liquid phase and liquid-liquid miscible or immiscible two phases，as well as the mass transfer characteristics of liquid-liquid two phases in microchannels.

The thermal plasma process for converting coal to acetylene in one-step opens up a direct means for green, clean and efficient utilization of coal, which has potential to substitute the conventional calcium carbide method for acetylene production. Based on the research and development on pilot-scale (ie, 2 MW & 5 MW) plasma reactors for coal pyrolysis, fundamental understanding and state-of-the-art advancement of this process were firstly reviewed. Then some key issues on the reactor design, involving high-efficient gas-solids mixing, coking control and reactor optimization and scale-up were discussed in detail. Furthermore, the process was investigated systematically based on the analyses of materials balance, energy balance and the economic assessment. It is concluded that the optimal utilization of energy and materials flows in the system is of great significance to ensure the economic feasibility.

Low-carbon economy suggests revolutionizing manufacture protocol and life style to make a substantial reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide. Its ultimate goal is to improve energy efficiency and achieve sustainable economic development. Low-carbon economy is the focus of economic restructuring, it means the future of world’s development. This paper described the new endeavor in current industrial biotechnology with the requirements of low-carbon economy which emphasized some hot items in bio-refinery and bio-production. Several polyesters featured with biodegradability and produced via bioprocess were discussed. The problems and difficulties in the development of industrial biotechnology were also pointed out.

Biorefinery, as a novel fuel production mode and a supplementary industry to oil refinery, plays an important role in the development of biomass energy in China. Being at the initial stage, biorefinery in China faces many challenges from different facets, such as raw material, technology and so on. Based on the situation of its development in China, a new idea is analyzed that biorefinery and oil refinery could be integrated in a biorefinery enterprise construction in appropriate areas. A case of a fuel ethanol project is studied to compare the two strategies of integrated construction and separate construction with regards to production cost, future development and raw materials supply. The results show that the integrated construction strategy could promote the sustainable development of energy and chemical industry in China.

The least square method is popularly used in linear and non-linear regressions for data fitting and estimating model parameters. To improve the efficiency, a series of objective function are proposed and compared with the traditional objective function of least squares. By numerical tests, it is found that the objective function of summing up the deviation raised to 1.5 power shows in overall the best performance in retrieving the true functional relationship underlying the raw data superimposed with random Gaussian error.

Membrane reactor is a process of coupling catalytic reaction with membrane separation. It solves the problem concerning catalyst separation in situ from the reaction mixture and makes the production process continuous. This review stated some key problems such as optimization of membrane and reaction processes，ultrafine particles adhesion and membrane fouling in the operation of the ceramic membrane reactors in detail，and presented the design and applications of the ceramic membrane reactor in some important precipitation and heterogeneous catalytic reactions.

Ethylene and propylene are important chemical materials and manufactured from petroleum at present. However, the oil shortage has been a worldwide problem, while the demands for olefins, especially for propylene, has been growing steadily. The alternative ways for the production of ethylene and propylene from methanol, which can be obtained from coal and natural gas, have received much attention from academic and industrial fields in recent decades. The technologies of methanol to olefins (MTO) and methanol to propylene (MTP) are developed rapidly in recent years. This paper presents a review on the recent researches in this field, including the modifications on catalysts ZSM-5 and SAPO zeolites, advances in hydrocarbon pool mechanism, and the progress in the technology development and industrialization of MTO and MTP.

The traditional synthesis of chemicals by esterification or transesterification requires relatively harsh conditions of heat, acid or alkali. Lipase-catalyzed processes are receiving more attentions as a promising alternative approach in the synthesis of chemicals because of its improving reaction efficiency, high selectivity, mild conditions and environment-friendly trait. Our group has developed a new lipase from Candida sp.,for enzymatic synthesis of esters. The lipase from Candida sp.99-125 exhibited excellent activity and stability for esterification and transesterification in non-aqueous media. Production of the lipase and various examples of its applications in enzymatic synthesis of chemicals, such as medium- and long-chain fatty acid esters, dibasic acid esters, vitamin A palmitate, biodiesel and chiral intermediates, were presented in this paper.

Water-soluble poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO-PPO-PEO) triblock copolymers are high-molecular-weight nonionic surfactants, which exhibit the richest structural polymorphism in selective solvents. One of the most interesting features of the triblock copolymers is their self-association in aqueous solutions and their rich phase behavior. The microstructure resulting from the self-assembly of the triblock copolymer can vary from normal micelles in solution, through all types of normal and reverse lyotropic liquid crystals (normal micellar cubic, normal hexagonal, normal bicontinuous cubic, lamellar, reverse bicontinuous cubic, reverse hexagonal, reverse micellar cubic), to reverse micelles, as the relative volume fraction of the apolar components increases over that of the polar components. The self-assembly properties of PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymer in aqueous solutions are reviewed. Experimental techniques such as scattering techniques, spectroscopy techniques, viscometer, surface tension, ultrasonic velocimetry, differential scanning calorimetry, size exclusion chromatography and transmission electron microscopy for studying self-assembly behaviors of PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymers are introduced. Effects of structure of the block copolymer, molecular mass, temperature, concentration and additives such as inorganic salts, alcohols, oils, surfactants, ionic liquids and different block copolymers on self-assembly behaviors are introduced. A general overview of thermodynamic theories, molecular simulations and computer simulations of block copolymer micellar systems is also presented. Current applications of block copolymer as synthesis of mesoporous materials, controlled delivery of drug agents, separation of biomacromolecules and modification are also discussed.

Azobenzene-containing block copolymers can self-assemble into a variety of supramolecular structures with unique photoresponsive properties，which can be potentially used in many fields such as information storage，sensors，drug delivery，and smart nano/micro-materials. This paper reviews the study of the synthesis，self-assembly and photoresponsive properties of block copolymers bearing strong push-pull azo chromophores，which has recently been carried out in authors’ laboratory.

As an important component of nano-technology and medical technology，nano drug has continuously attracted enormous interest from all over the world both in academic and industrial fields. Engineering and application of pharmaceutical nanoparticles is the primary focus of numerous research groups. This paper summarized the basic principles and preparation methods of nano-/micro-structured drug particles，and reviewed DFT calculation results of pharmaceutical conformers，as well as the academic and industrial achievements of preparing nano-/micro-structured drug particles via liquid-phase precipitation method by authors’research group. For different characteristics of drug systems，anti-solvent，reaction，anti-solvent coupled reaction precipitation，and molecular self-assembly precipitation method were successfully developed for the preparation of nano-/microstructured drug particles. The industrial applications of high-gravity controlled precipitation technology in the preparation of nano drug were also addressed.

Considering an association contribution, combining cubic P-R model with an association contribution, a new CPA (cubic-plus-association) equation of state (EoS) was presented in this paper. The association term was directly computed with association equation which was proposed based on the Shield-Sticky model(SSM).The new CPA-SSM EoS was then used for descriptions of phase behavior of pure alkanolamine fluids and their mixtures. New molecular parameters for 8 alkanolamines were obtained by fitting experimental saturated vapor pressures and liquid densities at reduced temperature range from 0.55 to 0.90. The overall average deviations of saturated vapor pressure and liquid density were only 0.57% and 1.80% respectively. Using an adjustable parameter independent temperature, satisfactory calculations for binary isothermal and isobaric vapor-liquid equilibria (VLE) were obtained. In addition, this model can successfully reproduce VLE of multi-component mixtures in virtue of binary information.

In order to decrease energy consumption and cost for CO₂ capture with absorption, with monoethanol (MEA) solution as the example and electrolytic non-random two-liquid model（E-NRTL）, CO₂ solubility is calculated. In the calculation, chemical reaction equilibria and gas-liquid phase equilibria are included, and calculation results are in good agreement with literature data. Then process simulation software for CO₂ absorption is established, and total energy consumption is calculated including those for regeneration, gas compression and liquid transportation. Different effects to total energy consumption, such as absorption pressure, regeneration pressure, solution concentration and flow rate, are analyzed and optimized. All these methods can be used for further development of CO₂ capture processes with the absorption method.

The dynamic properties of clusters were studied in a concurrent downflow CFB reactor (downer) using optical fiber solids concentration signals. The downer reactor (0.1 m i. d. and 10 m high) was operated at gas velocities ranging from 3.5 to 10 m·s^-1 and solids flux from 50 to 200 kg·m^-2_·s^-1. The particles used in this research were FCC catalyst, with average size of 67 μm and a density of 1500 kg·m^-3. Sensitivity analysis was first conducted to establish the optimum settings for determining cluster parameters. Aggregate properties (frequency, time fraction, existence time and average solids concentration) were established using transient solids concentration data, based on the results of the sensitivity analysis. The cluster properties were affected strongly by the operating conditions (gas velocity and solids flux) and by the local mean solids concentration. The cluster properties also varied strongly with axial and radial positions in the downer. In the fully developed section, the core region shows high clustering tendency than the wall region. Smooth axial profiles of cluster properties were observed towards the bottom.

Since the Ergun equation is applicable for calculation of gas-liquid pressure drop in the cases without interphase interaction, and the pressure drop ratio of single gas phase to gas-liquid concurrent flow can be accounted for as the relative permeability of the gas phase, the Ergun equation is proposed to characterize the flow regime transition based on the gas-liquid interaction in a trickle bed. To check the validity of this methodology, experimental work was conducted in a plexiglass column of 140 mm ID packed with glass beads of different diameters (1.9, 3.6, 5.2 and 9.3 mm) by applying air and water as the working media. The transient data under pulsing flow were obtained by applying pressure transducers and electrical capacitance tomography (ECT).The comparison of pressure drops from experiment and prediction showed that the Ergun equation was inappropriate to the pulsing flow, in which the gas-liquid interaction is significant. Therefore, the experimental two-phase pressure drop was used instead of the theoretical one for the calculation of gas relative permeability. It was found that the permeability of gas under various gas and liquid flow rates as well as different particle diameters was lower than 0.08 if pulsing flow was reached.

The transport of copper ion through a hollow fiber renewal liquid membrane was studied with LIX984N as the carrier, kerosene as the diluent and H₂SO₄ as the stripping. The experiments were conducted as functions of pressure difference, copper concentration in feed and stripping solutions, flow rate of both sides, operation mode, effective length of the hollow fibers module, etc. The results showed that the pressure difference between shell side and lumen side fluid had little influence on the mass transfer performance of the hollow fiber renewal liquid membrane process. The mass transfer flux increased with the increasing copper concentration in the feed solution. The copper concentration in the stripping solution had almost no influence on the mass transfer. The mass transfer flux increased with the increasing flow rate of feed phase on the shell side, while the flow rate of stripping phase on the lumen side had slight influence on the mass transfer. The effect of both operation modes of countercurrent and cocurrent flow on the mass transfer was slight. The average mass transfer flux per area decreased with the increasing effective length of hollow fibers.

Nitrile hydratase (NHase) is an important industrial enzyme used for acrylamide production from acrylonitrile hydration. The reaction kinetics of NHases in free resting cells of Rhodococcus sp. or Nocardia sp. was presented based on a bi-steady state assumption. Effects of substrate concentration, product concentration and hydration temperature were investigated experimentally and correlated by Levenberg-Marquardt method and global optimal method. The kinetics model showed that reaction would be inhibited when the concentration of product was high. When the mean concentration of substrate was lower than 10 g·L^-1, the extrinsic hydration reaction rate showed a changeless base-value with respect to the altered substrate concentration, due to an instantaneous partial high concentration effect of substrate when being added into the reaction system. Effect of hydration temperature to reaction rate was rather significant. The nitrile hydratase activity at 28℃ was 3.3-fold of that at 15℃ under the same concentrations of substrate and product.

The effect of Ti（Ⅳ）on the efficiency of acetic acid degradation by H₂O₂/O₃ was investigated under acid condition. The processing parameters were optimized，and the degradation mechanism was also analyzed. The results indicated that addition of Ti（Ⅳ）could promote greatly the oxidation of acetic acid by H₂O₂/O₃ at pH 2.8，the efficiency of its decomposition reached 52.0% in 30 min for Ti（Ⅳ）/H₂O₂/O₃ and only 5.6% for alone H₂O₂/O₃. When Ti（Ⅳ）and H₂O₂ concentrations were 6 mg·L^-1 and 120 mg·L^-1，Ti（Ⅳ）/H₂O₂/O₃ had the highest degradation efficiency of acetic acid. The effect of pH was not significant，which might be related to the specific initiating mechanism for various pH values. In view of the shortcomings and characteristics of H₂O₂/O₃，Ti（Ⅳ）/H₂O₂/O₃ system that can be a complement to H₂O₂/O₃ process，is suitable for application in acid solution. The test by using tert-butyl alcohol showed that acetic acid degradation in Ti（Ⅳ）/H₂O₂/O₃ system followed a hydroxyl radical-type mechanism. The R_ct values of H₂O₂/O₃ and Ti（Ⅳ）/H₂O₂/O₃ calculated by relative method were 5.548×10^-9 and 2.128×10^-7，respectively，indicating that Ti（Ⅳ）/H₂O₂/O₃ system could generate more hydroxyl radicals.

Based on free radical chain reaction mechanism，elementary reaction steps for aromatic hydrocarbon liquid phase oxidation are generalized. According to the characteristics of aromatic hydrocarbon oxidation，some simplifications are made for the model，so that the number of model parameters is reduced considerably. This modeling method is applied to three cases，including oxidations of p-xylene（PX）to terephthalic acid（TPA），p-toluic acid（p-TA）to TPA，and ethylbenzene（EB）to ethylbenzene hydroperoxide（EBHP）.The results show that the kinetic models are in good agreement with experimental data，in which the maximum deviation between calculated and experimental data is no more than 10%. In each case，those common parameters regarding the chain propagation and termination steps are constant under different reaction conditions. The modeling method may be used for other hydrocarbons.

The Cu_1-xCo_xO(0.02≤x≤0.14) composite oxide electrodes are prepared by reactive DC magnetron sputtering. Techniques of X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) are adopted to confirm the crystal structure, chemical composition and surface morphology of deposits. The electrochemical characteristics of deposits are further explored by cyclic voltammetry (CV), linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).The XRD spectrum analysis shows that the deposits have a CuO monoclinic crystal structure without appearance of cobalt oxide isolated phase. Based on the electrochemical study, the Cu_1-xCo_xO electrode exhibits better catalytic activity than CuO and Co₃O₄ electrodes for oxygen evolution reaction (OER).The increase in OER activity of the Cu_1-xCo_xO electrode is attributed to its better catalysis, enlarged surface roughness and decreased resistance according to the results of electrochemical analysis together with SEM. Moreover, the power of 45 W (Co)-100 W (Cu) is chosen for the best conditions to prepare the deposits.

A computational mass transfer method for simulating extractive distillation process is proposed and applied to the simulation of an extractive distillation for the separation of benzene and thiophene mixture using N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone（NMP）as the extractive solvent. To testify the validity of the simulating method，experiment was performed under identical condition in a randomly packed column，in which the concentration distribution in the extractive distillation column was measured. The simulated results was found in agreement with the experimental measurement. It demonstrates that the proposed computational mass transfer method can be used to predict effectively the concentration and velocity profiles in an extractive distillation column.

Crystallization of zinc lactate in the presence of malic acid as an impurity was investigated, and the effects of operating variables on the final solid product yield, purity, crystal structure and habit were studied. The results showed that the structure and habit of the impure crystals were hardly changed under different operating conditions, while their length-diameter ratios increased comparing with the pure zinc lactate crystals. Moreover, the solid purity decreased linearly with the increasing yield. However, the purity decreased significantly when substantial secondary nucleation occurred in crystallization.

A novel treatment process of the coal-gasification wastewater produced from Lurqi gasification was proposed in this paper. The new and old treatment processes were compared. The ammonia and acidic gas in coal-gasification wastewater were removed through a sour water stripping tower in the new process. The pH value of the treated wastewater removed ammonia was decreased from 10.5 to 6.5, which is beneficial to subsequent solvent extraction of phenols. The distribution coefficients of MIBK to phenol and polyhydric phenols were greater than DIPE. The application of MIBK as extraction solvent recovers more phenolic substances from wastewater. The COD value is further reduced before the coal-gasification wastewater fed into the following biochemical treatment section.

Digraph-based causal models are widely used to model the cause and effect behavior of process systems. Signed digraphs (SDG) capture the direction of the effect as well. SDG reasoning can identify the propagation path of the deviation at a certain node over the whole SDG, and as a result, plays an important role not only in online fault diagnosis, but also in offline hazard and operability (HAZOP) analysis. In recent years, various packages have been developed to use SDG reasoning as an auxiliary tool in the chemical process and process safety analysis. This paper describes how existing open source components can be used to construct a browser and server architecture for an SDG inference framework. A small example is used to illustrate how this framework can be utilized to construct an SDG system for the given process. Thereafter, SDG systems for two complicated processes are created to demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework.

Porcine pancreatic lipase (PPL) has been immobilized in the mesoporous channels of SBA-15 possessing different pore diameters. The nano-sized channels entrapping enzymes could be considered as nanoreactors due to the narrow pore-size distribution and one-dimensional channels of the host, and the internal diffusion and kinetics in the enzymatic hydrolysis have been investigated. The dependence of the Thiele modulus and the internal effectiveness factors on the pore size, as well as the correlation of kinetic parameters with the internal diffusion, indicate that, in the range of pore size <9.4 nm, the internal diffusion limitation significantly occurred, when pore size was larger than 10.9 nm, the internal diffusion limitation made less impact on the enzymatic reaction.

In this work, a theoretical analysis method is proposed to analyze the theoretical energy consumption for the organic contaminant mineralization by advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) with the process coupling design framework. Moreover, the theoretical energy consumption for the mineralization of 1000 kg19 representative organic contaminants (8 chlorinated alkyl hydrocarbons, 4 chlorinated alkenes, 3 brominated methanes, 4 aromatic hydrocarbons and their derivatives) by four possible oxidants in AOPs was investigated and compared with that of 1000kg organic contaminants removal by
physical procedures.The results show that the mineralization of the organic contaminants in AOPs is exothermic, and the theoretical energy consumption in AOPs is higher with orders of magnitude compared with that by physical methods. The theoretical energy consumption for organic contaminant mineralization decreases with the more C—H bonds being replaced by C—Cl or C—Br bonds in chlorinated alkyl hydrocarbons, ethenes or brominated methanes, and the theoretical energy consumption follows the order：chlorinated methanes < chlorinated ethanes < chlorinated propanes, which agrees with that by physical methods. Moreover, the theoretical energy consumption for mineralization of chlorinated methane with different oxidants in AOPs follows the order：O₃>O^->·OH>O₂， while for other systems investigated, the order of the theoretical energy consumption is O^->O₃>·OH>O₂.

Based on the view about removal of sulfur by denitrifying，for which the bacteria was enriched in a continuous stirred reactor，and the functional bacteria was monitored and identified by plate count and PCR-DGGE methods. The single strain SNB1 obtained by isolation and purification of bacteria was also identified. In the reactor， the amount of bacteria for total，desulfurization and denitrifying increased by 1.92×10，6.49×10⁵，1.66×10³-fold. There are three dominant microorganisms in the reactor during stable operation. a，a flora and Thauera sp. homology up to 99.0%，and it is a kind of denitrifying bacteria. The physiological and biochemical characteristics of the SNB1 contained revealed that it is a kind of facultative autotrophic bacteria and has the 99.0% homology with Thauera selenatis. The ratio and amount of desulfurization bacteria are 49.3% and 3.70×10⁹ cfu&#8226;ml^-1.b，the homology of another flora with Desulfovibrio sp. is higher than 98%，it is sulphate-reducing bacteria. c，the homology of third flora with Rhodococcus sp. is higher than 94%，it is denitrifying bacteria. When S/N is in the range of 0.007—0.386，100% S^2- and 46.47% SO^2-₄ are converted into S⁰. The removal efficiency of NO^-₃ and COD are 72.3%—95.8% and 9.8%—43.5%，respectively.

The structural characteristic and surface physicochemical properties of bagasse magnesium lignosulfonate(MLS) are investigated by means of GPC,UV,IR and ¹³C NMR. Four purified MLS fractions with different molecular weights were obtained by fractionation using ultrafiltration and analyzed. The results show that MLS contained more syringin phenyl propane, and less guaiacol phenyl propane comparing with woody calcium lignosulfonate (CLS). The average molecular weight of MLS and the content of sulfonic and phenolic hydroxyl group are lower than that of CLS. As the increasing of molecular weight of MLS, the mass fraction of sulfonic and phenolic hydroxyl group increases. The relative molecular weight distribution and the content of sulfonic and phenolic hydroxyl group are the main affecting factors on the adsorption characteristic of MLS on cement-water interface and the surface charge of cement particle absorbing MLS. With the increasing of molecular weight of MLS, the Zeta potential absolute value of cement particle increases. The adsorbing amount and the Zeta potential absolute value of the surface of cement particle adsorbing MLS fraction with the molecular weight more than 50000, is similar to that of CLS, and its adsorption isotherm follows Langmuir type.

Gating membranes with grafted diblock poly(methacrylic acid)- block-poly(N-isopropylacylamide) (PMN) and poly(N-isopropylacylamide)-block-poly(methacrylic acid) (PNM) are successfully prepared via surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP).The dual pH-/thermo-responsive property of these membranes are systematically investigated by buffer solution permeation experiments at different pH values and temperatures. Results indicate that the grafting yields of the first blocks grafted in the diblock polymers are always higher than those of the second ones. The responsive gating coefficients of the prepared membranes triggered by simultaneous pH and temperature stimuli are much higher than that triggered by single pH or temperature stimulus. The gating characteristics of the membranes are mainly dominated by the first blocks in the grafted diblock polymers, and the second blocks have smaller effect on it. The pH-responsive gating coefficient of grafted PMAA chains is more significant than the thermo-responsive gating coefficient of grafted PNIPAM chains. The results in this study provide valuable guidance for designing and preparing dual- or multi-responsive gating membranes.