Chemical Engineering Students Win First prize in the 16th National“Challenge Cup” Competition

Tianjin University’s "Bionic Special Invasive Interface for Fluid Transfer Optimization and Application” project directed by Professor Cao Moyuan from the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, won the first prize in the 16th National "Challenge Cup" College Students’ Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Competition. It is the first time Tianjin University has won the first prize in the Chemical Energy field.

The project was conducted by Bai Haoyu, Zhao Tianhong and Yan Hui majoring in Molecular Science and Engineering.Launched in 2016, the project has achieved fruitful results so far. The students published one paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A , another in Materials Horizons and four other articles in the Science Citation Index. They also have a national invention patent. The cumulative impact factor of their published paper reaches 57.622. One paper even won the Materials Horizons’2018 Outstanding Paper Runner-up Award, and was featured as a hot topic by the Royal Society of Chemistry and the industry media “The Frontier of Polymer Science”.

With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the traditional chemical industry is facing enormous challenges. The rapid development of the intelligent, refined and efficient process of modernization requires the close integration of chemical engineering with chemistry, information science, and bionics. The project combines chemistry and bionics to solve the problems and challenges traditional chemicals face. Inspired by the special structure of the desert cactus, the project members produced a multi-layered hydrophobic and hydrophobic mist collecting surface to achieve liquid directed high-efficiency transport and solve the problem of industrial steam collection. A simplified one-way liquid transport interface is achieved by learning from asymmetrical arrays of hydrophilic arrays on the skin of desert lizards. By using this interface, the single liquid transport process can be realized in a variety of complicated situations, breaking through the concept that the one-way liquid infusion must be realized on the three-dimensional structured interface, which is generally considered by the academic community, and provides a one-way transport research which is a simple and universal solution.

The project introduces bionic thinking into the chemical mass transfer process, which will generate new research growth points, thereby achieving a non-destructive, low-consumption and efficient fluid transport process. At the same time, it provides a feasible idea for chemical innovation research under the background of new engineering construction.

By the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology

Editors: Eva Yin & Doris Harrington