AWARDEE OF CHEMISTRY PRIZE

LIN LIWU

Abstract

Lin LiWu, was born in 1929 in shantou, Guangdong Province. Physical chemist, Research Professor, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.  Born in Santou of Guangdong Province, graduated from Zhejiang University in 1952.
During the 1960's he invented a new catalyst and catalytic process for the isomerization and hydrocracking of heavy oil to produce jet fuel from Daqing paraffin base crude oil. The process development was carried out with the collaboration of the Daqing petroleum chemical company in 1965 and commercialized in 1967.  A new plant with the capacity of 300000 tons per year was established and operated to produce low freezing point Jet fuel and diesel fuel.  This plant addressed the needs of the aviation industry which had been faced with a serious shortage of aviation kerosene.  During the 1970's, with the collaboration of researchers from the Ministry of Petroleum, he explored the use of a new generation of multi-metallic catalysts in the first reforming unit . In the 1980's he utilized new catalysts for the dehydrogenation of long chain paraffins to produce detergents.  All these processes and catalysts have been put into commercial production.
Since 1980, Lin Liwu has concentrated his research on studies of the surface structure and reaction chemistry of metallic catalysts.  With the cooperation of his students new concepts have been developed in the area of catalyst preparation,    hydrocarbon conversion, C１ chemistry and conversion of methane.  Among these concepts the most important issues are the “Metal-support interaction of metallic-acidic bi-functional catalysts” and the “Sandwich model of the highly dispersed supported bi-component catalysts”. From the results of this fundamental research Lin Liwu and his students have published 200 papers in international and national journals.
He was elected to be a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993.