AWARDEE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

GUO TIANMIN

Professor Guo Tianmin, an expert in chemical / petroleum engineering, was born on May 27, 1929 in Nanjing, Jiansu Province. He graduated from the Chemical Engineering Department of Ging-Ling University (currently Nanjing University) in 1950. He joined the Beijing Institute of Petroleum Technology (currently University of Petroleum) in 1953 and was teaching and doing research there up to now.
In early 1980s he has been teaching (Engineering Thermodynamics) and doing research at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM) and Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) for two years. In the period of 1987-1995, he was invited to pay short-term visits to the Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh), Imperial College (London), the Technical University of Denmark (Lyngby) and the Tsinghua University (Xinchu, Taiwan) as a guest professor. In 1991, he was conferred the titles:  “Expert who made outstanding contribution to China" by the Chinese government and “Expert who made great contribution to the petroleum industry" by the Ministry of Petroleum.
Prof. Guo's major research interests are in the fields of phase equilibria, separation process and gas hydrates. He has established the first “High Pressure Reservoir Fluids Phase Behavior & Property Research Laboratory” and　“Gas Hydrates Research Laboratory” in China. In the past two decades he has made significant contribution to the basic research in the various frontier fields related to the oil/gas production and gas hydrate technology. The major theoretical / experimental achievements of his group include:
Extended the application of equation of state (traditionally can be applied to simple light hydrocarbons only) to describe the phase behavior of complex systems (reservoir fluids, highly non-ideal electrolyte / polar component containing systems).
Established a unified method for correlating the transport property data (viscosity, thermal conductivity) of hydrocarbon gases / liquids based on equation of state, which is far attractive than the traditional empirical equations / nomographs.
Developed a new generalized hydrate model for describing the formation / dissociation conditions of gas hydrates (Chen-Guo model), which has been successfully applied to various systems containing water and aqueous solution of electrolytes / polar inhibitors.
Modeled the extremely complex phenomenon of asphaltene precipitation in reservoir fluids using scaling theory.
Measured a large amount of scarcely available basic data on the high pressure phase behavior of complex systems, including: near-critical reservoir fluid mixtures, gas-injected enhanced oil recovery systems, H2S-rich sour natural gas systems with elemental sulfur precipitation, asphaltene / wax precipitation systems, as well as the gas hydrate equilibria / kinetics in the presence of aqueous electrolyte / polar inhibitor solutions and the high pressure transport property data (viscosity and interfacial tension).
Most of his papers (more than 100) were published in international journals. He has been appointed as the executive editor (Asian-Pacific region, 1997-1999) and a member of the international panel (2000-now) of the prestigious journal Chemical Engineering Science (CES), and a member of the editorial board of Fluid Phase Equilibria (1995-now). For honoring his contribution, CES has published a special issue under his name (Vol. 56, No. 24) and another special issue offered by the Journal of Petroleum Science & Engineering is under preparation. His monograph entitled  Multicomponent Vapor-Liquid Equilibria and Distillation is a popular technical book in China and has been awarded a national prize on the best scientific-technical publication in 1983.
Prof. Guo has also done excellent jobs in teaching, his lectures on the undergraduate / graduate courses, “Unit Operations” and “Fluid Phase Equilibria”, were highly evaluated by students. He has directed the thesis work of 18 Ph.D, 20 MS students and the research projects of 7 postdoctoral fellows.