• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Personal profile ‘I have always year he chaired a consortium to investigate sustainability in the closely followed chemical sciences, sponsored by scientific the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Chemistry Division. advancement His interest in sustainability Fuelling is driven by environmental worldwide’ damage, rather than by the threat of limited oil reserves. Likewise, his main driving force for biodiesel development is to stem environmental damage, rather than find alternatives to crude oil. China’s future However, with dwindling reserves Min Enze helped to kickstart China’s industrial boom. and rising oil prices, biodiesel could become economically as well as Fifty years on, his research focuses on tackling the environmentally viable. ‘A fortuitous benefit of rising oil prices … a shot environmental damage of development, reports Bea Perks in the arm for green chemistry,’ says Min. Young ambition Min was born in Szechuan Province, where the main industry in the 1920s was agriculture. He didn’t start off wanting to be a chemist but started studying civil engineering at China’s National Central University. ‘I wanted to build a bridge across the Yangtze River in memory of my mother,’ he recalls. (Min’s mother died when he was at middle school.) But his mother’s brother, a banker, The story of a young boy in civil war, to university during the didn’t think much of the bridge idea. south-western China in the In short second world war, and completed He wanted his nephew to become 1920s who went on to become Min Enze was studying a PhD in the US, during which an industrialist, so in 1943 Min one of the country’s leading for a PhD in the US when time his homeland became a switched to chemical engineering, chemical engineers reflects the his homeland became communist state. On returning to an unusual degree choice at the time, extraordinary political, cultural and the People’s Republic of China, Min took on the Herculean he says. With Szechuan’s reliance on economic progression of a country China. task of keeping pace with the agriculture, Min – who clearly had widely tipped as the next global He had been working world’s refining industry despite grand aspirations from an early age superpower. at the ministry of stifling trade restrictions. Refining – shelved his plans for a bridge and Min Enze, now a highly regarded petroleum’s research technology had to be developed from decided to build a fertiliser factory. senior member of the Chinese institute in Beijing for scratch, since much of the outside When he graduated in 1946, Academy of Sciences and senior three years before the world would have nothing to do with there were no jobs for chemists consultant at the Sinopec Research country’s biggest oil field this new state. in his home town of Chengdu and Institute of Petroleum Processing was discovered in 1959. chemistry graduates were expected in Beijing, was born in February He is a senior member Going green to become school teachers. It’s 1924, at the dawn of the Chinese of the Chinese Academy It’s a very different story today very different now; the city is a civil war (which was to rage on until of Sciences and a – China is now the third largest key manufacturing centre for 1950 with the birth of the People’s member of the Chinese trading partner of the US and, in the pharmaceutical, chemical, Republic of China). Academy of Engineering terms of nominal GDP, the fourth metallurgy and food processing He went to school during the From 1996-2004 largest economy in the world. But industries. professor Min was such a meteoric rise comes at a chairman of the price, and China is now counting the Chemical progress academic committee at environmental costs. According to Leading Chinese medicinal MIN ENZE MIN the Sinopec Research the World Bank, Chinese cities make chemistry contract researcher Institute of Petroleum up 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted. ChemPartner has opened a facility Processing (RIPP) The World Health Organization in the city, citing the importance estimates that up to 17 per cent of of nearby universities. And deaths in the country are linked to construction of a $12 million environmental health risks. (£6 million) facility to house the Min’s research focus is firmly on city’s Institute for nanobiomedical green chemistry, and particularly technology & membrane biology on biodiesel production. ‘I have is about to start, in association always closely followed scientific with Shuguang Zhang, associate Min Enze as a PhD advancement worldwide, and director of the Center for Biomedical student at Ohio State became interested in green Engineering at Massachusetts University, US, in 1948 chemistry in 1995,’ he says. In that 83 years and counting Institute of Technology, US. ENZE MIN 52 | Chemistry World | April 2007 www.chemistryworld.org www.chemistryworld.org Chemistry World | April 2007 | 53 Personal profile German chemical giant BASF also as, effectively, prisoners of war. has an office in Chengdu. BASF is Finally, the US agreed to release MIN ENZE MIN a striking example of the potential them in return for US prisoners that overseas investors see in China: of war being held by the Chinese it employs over 4000 people in the following the Korean War (1950–53). country, operating 16 wholly owned In 1955 Min and Lu went home, companies, seven joint ventures and although more than 90 per cent 14 production sites. of their 1000 or so fellow students had chosen to stay. Whereas the Cleaning up US had feared Chinese students Min was lucky. After he graduated, would steal all their best ideas, the his influential uncle got him a new returnees found that Chinese position as an apprentice at a soap institutions were sometimes factory in Chongqing (at that time a reluctant to hire staff who’d just city in Szechuan province and now arrived from the US and might be a provincial-level municipality in spying for their new friends in the its own right). Perhaps his uncle West, and in the beginning jobs were had been looking into a crystal ball hard to come by. again: what Min learnt at the soap factory has been very helpful with Petroleum processing his biodiesel work, he says. In 1956 Min and Lu found positions While Min was at the soap factory, at the Ministry of Petroleum’s newly a project was set up in Shanghai established research institute in to train chemical engineers for Beijing, which later became Sinopec the dyeing and printing industry. RIPP. The institute was built on what Students were tempted with the had been farmland, and was founded promise of foreign travel. ‘This was before China had discovered crude a very attractive opportunity,’ he oil – the fuel source at that time was remembers. Min left the soap factory oil shale and coal. for a textile dyeing and printing ‘Fortunately, in 1959 China factory in Shanghai, where he met discovered Daqing, the biggest up again with a former university oil field in the country,’ says Min. classmate, Lu Wanzhen, who was ‘That provided the opportunity for later to become his wife and a very research. We wanted to build our successful chemist in her own right. every effort to stay in the US. But World’s first commercial own refinery.’ The boom in Chinese that wasn’t for Min and Lu. They magnetically stabilised chemistry really started with the Foreign shores would have bucked the trend and bed unit for purification discovery of Daqing, says Min. ‘Once After the second world war the returned to China, to get married of caprolactam China had that resource it took off, Chinese government planned to and launch their careers, were it not so now there is a refining plant in send 1000 students to the US. In fact, for international politics. virtually every province in China.’ the students had to provide the cost of travel, tuition and living expenses Political upheaval Crude oil lights the touch paper themselves; the government’s only After the founding of the People’s With the discovery of Daqing, Min contribution was to exchange the Republic of China in 1949, the US was instrumental in developing funds into foreign currency, which refused to let its Chinese students major refining technologies needed was in very short supply at that time. leave – unwilling to let them take the by industry. Fortunately Min was able to arrange skills and knowledge they’d picked He is widely respected for having a bank loan which got him a passage up back to what was now communist laid the technical foundation of to the US and living expenses. China. petroleum refining catalysts in (The loan was easy to repay, he So Min and Lu were trapped. They China. He developed cracking says, because massive inflation had married in the US in 1950 and both catalysts, including spherical turned the loan into peanuts.) graduated with PhDs from Ohio aluminium silicate catalysts for So in 1947 the young man set State University the following year. aviation fuel, and micro-spherical sail for the US and began a masters Chinese nationals were no longer Si–Al catalysts for the production degree at Ohio State University’s permitted student visas in the US, so of petrol, diesel and liquefied department of chemical engineering, the young couple had to find work. petroleum gases. which then progressed to a PhD. Min worked for a chemical company In the 1960s, he developed The year before he left China, Lu in Chicago for four years, where spherical Si–Al cracking catalysts Wanzhen had also left for the US. he investigated ways to prevent for a moving bed reactor.

Load more

  3

Copy Link