Chemical Engineering in China: Past, Present, and Future

The modern chemical industry developed rapidly in the 20th century. Recent chemical engineering milestones — such as the integration of systems engineering methodologies, computer control, and advances in bioengineering and new materials — are at the core of today’s chemical industry, and have made enormous impacts on human civilization. The Chinese chemical industry experienced major changes in the past century as well. A huge and rapidly increasing demand for basic and specialty chemicals has spurred its development, creating a need for advancements in chemical engineering education, research, and development. According to analyses by the American Chemistry Council (discussed in the Feb. 2011 issue of CEP, p. 16), over the next three years, China’s chemical industry is expected to grow at a pace four times that of the U.S. chemical industry, and in 2011 China is poised to overtake the U.S. as the largest chemical economy. China’s overall economy will inevitably surpass the size of the U.S. economy, currently the world’s largest. However, there is a fundamental difference between the development of chemical engineering in China and in developed countries. As one of the key industries driving the growth of the Chinese economy, the chemical industry experienced its rapid expansion only in the past 30 years, compared to century-long progress in developed nations. While China is now building a world-class chemical economy, it still faces immense sustainability challenges in terms of energy, resources, workforce, and the environment. The beginnings of the Chinese chemical industry Until the 1980s, the chemical industry in China was still in its infancy. To meet the basic demand of feeding 20% of the world’s population (1.3 billion people) using only 7% of the world’s arable land, the chemical industry focused on the production of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides to support the rapid expansion of Chinese agriculture. However, while chemical fertilizers should have ensured better crop yield, the insufficient technological foundation in the chemical industry, along with inadequate levels of engineering education, undercut progress. China could not produce enough fertilizers to meet demand, and what was produced created heavy pollution and utilized resources wastefully. Chemicals and petrochemicals. In the early 1980s, China began to import mature petrochemical process technologies from abroad, which led to its establishment as a competitive force in the petrochemical industry. Today, China leads the world in the production of chemical fertilizers, synthetic fibers, caustic soda, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and ranks second in the processing of crude oil and the production of ethylene and synthetic resins (Table 1). While current production of petroleum refinery products, nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers, pesticides, caustic soda, and inorganic salts meets or exceeds domestic demand, the production of ethylene, synthetic fibers and other materials, potassium fertilizers, and methanol is heavily supplemented by imports. As the capacity for basic chemicals increased, technical indicators of capital efficiency, such as plant capacity in the petrochemical industry, have also been continuously The need to address ecological problems stemming from China’s burgeoning industrial growth is the impetus behind many recent developments in China’s surging chemical industry. Yong Jin Yi Cheng Tsinghua Univ. Chemical Engineering in China: Past, Present, and Future