Festschrift in Honor of the 90thBirthday of Prof. Chen Jiayong

Prof. Jiayong (Chia-yung) Chen is a famous scientist of chemical engineering and a pioneer of hydrometallurgical discipline in China. He has made many important contributions to the development of chemical engineering of China.

Prof. J.Y. Chen was born in a scholarly family in Jintang county of Sichuan province in 1922. He studied very hard since his childhood. After his high school in Chengdu, he was enrolled in Department of Chemical Engineering of Central University of China in Chongqing and graduated in 1943. Then he worked as teaching assistant in the same department. During the four years of teaching carrier, Prof. Chen audited consciously many courses given by mathematics and physics departments, which added to his strong solid basis of mathematics and physics for his academic carrier. In that period, he succeeded in the synthesis of pesticide DDT under the guidance of Prof. Jiyu Gao.

In 1947, Prof. Chen went to the Urbana-Champaign Campus of University of Illinois, USA and got his Ph. D. degree in 1951. In 1952, he conducted research on “Aerosol filtration with fibrous layer” at the Urbana-Champaign Campus and part of the results was published in Chemical Reviews in 1955. This paper has drawn tremendous attention, translated into several languages, and is regarded as an authoritative summary of the early aerosol researches in the field and the citation continues way into the 21stcentury.

In 1954, while working at duPont Company, Prof. Chen participated in the project of continuous polymerization of poly(ethylene terephthalate). Applying the priniciples of chemical reaction engineering, he revealed that the polymerization could be accelerated and he proposed new technical measures to improve the process. His proposal and experimental design were later confirmed by his colleagues.

In 1956, being invited by Prof. Z.P. Ye, the famous metallurgist in China, Prof. Chen came back to China to point him in the preparatory work for the establishment of Institute of Chemical Metallurgy, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He established the first hydrometallurgical laboratory in the Institute of Chemical Metallurgy for basic research and development work in hydrometallurgy in 1958 and served as the laboratory director. In the laboratory, he carried out the hydrometallurgical research from the chemical engineering point of view for the first time. Both the basic research and engineering research projects in his laboratory always served and meet the national economic needs.

In 1958, Prof. Chen et al. solved the problem of leaching refractory Dongchuan copper oxide ore through a new high-temperature/high-pressure hydrometallurgical technology, and established the first hydrometallurgical pilot plant in Dongchuan to test it. In 1960, Prof. Chen coordinated the research and industrial test on the scale-up of leaching reactor in Dongchuan plant, Yunnan province. He studied the jet loop reactor with the δ-pulse and step change tracer methods, built the mathematical models and finally solved the problems of scaling-up the whole process. Besides, he studied the air-lift reactor in a systematic way, with the results verified in the Dongchuan pilot plant.

Prof. Chen developed a new hydrometallurgical process to solve the problems of intractable Mojiang nickel oxide ore and imported high-arsenic cobalt ore in Yunnan. To solve the waste gas, waste water, waste residue problems, he adopted the concept of "clean production" to pursue for recycling of hydrometallurgical water, reduction of pollution, reasonable reuse of waste residue, which achieved remarkable accomplishments and hugeeconomic benefits.

To meet the country’s urgent needs, he was the first one in China to use hydrometallurgical principles and methods to prepare metal powders. A large number of composite metal powders for different functions had been manufactured, such as nickel-clad aluminum, tungsten carbide-cobalt package. These products helped to provide the high-temperature resistance coating materials and overcome the difficulties of high-temperature sealing for aircraft engine. Besides, the solvent extraction theory and separation engineering techniques were rather early applied to separate biochemical products. In early 1990s, Prof. Chen carried out researches on biological desulfurization for diesel fuels by the concept of “Green Chemistry”, to alleviate the environmental pollution and win back the blue sky of the nature.

He created new hydrometallurgical processes by using the chemical reaction engineering points of view and methods, made outstanding contributions for the development of Chinese metallurgical industry, and received many awards for his achievements, including 2 honors of the National Science Conference Award in 1978, the National Invention Award in 1980, the National Natural Science Award in 1987, the Special National Defense Science and Technology Progress Award in 1988, the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1995, the National Natural Science Award in 2009, the Technical Science Award of the Ho-Leung-Ho-Lee Foundation for Scientific and technological Progress Award in 1996, etc. Prof. Chen was elected as academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980. In addition, he also served on the 4th to the 8th CPPCC National Committee. He was once the deputy director of Institute of Chemical Metallurgy, the vice council chairman of the Chinese Non-ferrous Metals Society, and the Editorial Advisory Board member of Hydrometallurgy.

After 2000, Prof. Chen focused his work on summarizing his experiences and inspiring future generations. He was the co-editor–in-chief of two technical manuals: Solvent Extraction Handbook and Manual of Hydrometallurgy, which subsequently became the classic reference books in relevant fields. Prof. Chen is modest, approachable, and is deeply loved by his 57 graduate students and the younger generation. Many his young students have become the head investigators of national key scientific research projects.

As the co-editor-in-chief and founding editor of Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering from 1993 to 2011, Prof. Chen dedicated his utmost to the growth of the journal, with the impact factor rising steadily. This year is the 30th anniversary of initiation of CJChE and Professor Chen’s 90th birthday. In this occasion, we edit this special issue for celebration and in honor of Professor Chen, and express the best wishes of his colleagues and students. We all wish him enjoy the life of health and happiness, the discussion with us on ideas and advices as always, and be delighted with the success and achievements under his encouragement and inspirations.

ZHANG Yi (張懿)

LIU Huizhou (劉會(huì)洲)

Guest editors

2012.02.15