AWARDEE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

WANG JIADING

Abstract

Prof. Wang Jiading, a specialist in chemical engineering, was born in Chongqing in 1919. He graduated from the Chemical Engineering Department of South-Western Associate University in 1941. Received Master Degree in 1945 from MIT of USA with a thesis of“Low Temperature Carbonization of Lignite in Fluidized Bed”. He came back to China in 1946. Since then, He has worked successively in Chongqing University, Nankai University and Tianjin University until he transferred to Tsinghua University in 1957. He is a professor of the Department of Chemical of Tsinghua University, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the State Key Lab of Chemical Engineering.
In the year of 1958, Prof. Wang started to organize the pioneer research of“Reprocessing of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel by Solvent Extraction”in this country. Since then, he and his colleagues studied every detail of the chemistry, technology and engineering of this process and the whole work was extended into a R & D project supported by the industry. Along with the achievement of the whole project Prof. Wang made an outstanding contribution on developing a kind of special mixer-settler extractor for industrial application. This process was adopted by the industry in building the first reprocessing plant in China.
Other contributions of Prof. Wang in the field of solvent extraction includes development of new methods for modeling and scale-up of column type extractors and development of novel extractors based on careful study of the flow and mass transfer characteristic of drop swarms. Some new technology such as removal of phenols from industrial wastes by solvent extracion alone base on reversible complexion has also been successfully deve-loped and used in industry. He is a well known scientist in this field and is an international member of the International Solvent Extraction Conference (elected in 1993).