AWARDEE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

QIU ZHUXIAN

Qiu Zhuxian,an expert of metallurgy of aluminium and magnesium in China. He was born in Haiman County,Jiangsu Province in April of 1921.He graduated from the Tanshan Engineering Collge of Chaotung University in August of 1943.After graduation, He entered three metallursical plants as engineer for 12 years. Now he is a professor and doctorate tutor at the Northeastern University.
He educated 40 doctorate degree students and 22 master degree students. He published 200 papers and 7 books in the field of aluminium electrolysis.
He visited foreign universities and researchers in 7 countries: Norway, Denmark, Japan, USA,Australia, New Zealand and Russia as guest professor and research fellow. He was elected the academician of Norwegian Academy of Sciences in 1989 and Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1995.
The main contributions of professor Qiu Zhuxian in sciences and technologies are : (1) He discovered two laws of wettability at the boundaries of molten salts and carbon electrodes in aluminium electrolysis. From further experiments he obtained complete wettability relationships between these two laws. These discovers are at the world new high level. (2)He and coworkers invented a twocompartment seethrough cell made of high purity quartq.They can clearly observe the physical and chemical reactions in the cell between molten salts and electrodes, gas evolution and metal formation. This seethrough cell won admirations from domestic and foreign scientists, because wettability is the main factor for realization of the electrochemical reactions occured at various boundaries in the cell. (3) Qiu Zhuxian calculated the heat energy losses of 24 types of aluminium electrolysis cells in the time period of 60 years from 1947 when he worked at the 27000 cell in Taiwan aluminium plant in 1947 up to the present 320000 big cell in Pinguo plant in 2002. He found that the energy consumption per tonne aluminium produced has been greatly decreased, it was due to the decrease of heat loss coefficient (calculated in volts) and increase in current efficiency. Now in China there are many big cells of 300000 in operation. (4)Qiu Zhuxian proposed and carried out aluminium electrolysis at lower temperatures of 930～940℃, hence the energy consumption per tonne aluminium produced decreases 300kW•h. In 2003 the aluminium production in China increases to 550000 tones, now China is at the first place in the world.