Biography
Dr. Fan has led and worked on many projects in the areas of chemical production, clean
energy generation and environmental protection, which have been supported by various
domestic and international funding agencies such as NSF, DOE and EPA, USGS and USDA
in the US, New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in
Japan, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and industrial companies such
as Siemens and Caterpillar. He has helped various chemical, environmental and energy
companies to overcome their technical challenges. He has published over 175 refereed
books, book chapters, and papers in different chemical and environmental engineering,
energy, and chemistry journals. As an Associate Editor, Editorial Board Member or
Advisory Board Member, he has been serving several international chemical and energy
as well as environmental journals. He has been supporting and supervising a number
of graduate students and postdocs as well as research scientists in his research areas.
Education
Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, 2003, Osaka University
Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, 2000, Iowa State University
Ph.D. Environmental Engineering, 1997, Chinese Academy of Sciences Environmental (Eng.)
Recognition
According to Clarivate (Web of Science), he has been a globally highly cited researcher
since 2018. The statistics of his research publications are shown
here.
Dr. Fan has published his research results in various refereed books, book chapters,
and journal papers in different chemical and environmental engineering, energy, and
chemistry journals such as
Nature Communications. He is one of the winners of “Top 50
Nature Communications chemistry and materials science articles in 2019”.
Research Interests
- Assimilation of various methods and processes including (homogenous, heterogeneous
and photo as well as bio) catalysis and separation with sorption and membrane as well
as chemical looping pathway for conversion of fossil and renewable resources into
value-added chemicals/materials and clean fuels
- Synthesis of new functional materials including ionic liquids, organic frameworks,
magnetic materials and catalysts with different methods including supercritical fluids,
crystallization, chemical vapor deposition
- Understanding the reaction kinetics and mechanisms associated with generation of chemicals
(including petrochemicals) and energy through various theoretical and experimental
methods including computation chemistry
- Recovering value-added materials from coal and other mineral utilization by-products
and co-produced water in fossil energy industries
- Water and wastewater treatment
- Bioresource production and conversion; carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)
- Development of renewable energies
- Computations
- Life cycle assessments of material production and energy generation processes
Research Projects
As a PI or Co-PI, he has led various projects in the areas of chemical and clean energy
generation and environmental protection, which have been supported by different funding
agencies such as NSF, DOE, EPA, USGS, and USDA in the US, New Energy and Industrial
Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in Japan, the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), and industrial companies such as Siemens and Caterpillar. He has helped
various chemical, environmental, and energy companies to overcome their technical
challenges in clean energy production. His NSF projects are related to the development
of synergic transformational solar chemical looping and photo-ultrasonic renewable
biomass refinery, simultaneous coal and biomass utilization, and application of nanotechnologies
in energy production and environmental protection. Additionally, his DOE projects
include those in catalysis, mercury removal, CO
2 capture and conversion, rare earth extraction, carbon fuel cells, and hydrogen from
ethane, catalytic production of near-zero-CH
4 syngas, F-T synthesis, catalytic ethylene glycol synthesis.
https://www.uwyo.edu/nanotech/index.html
Read Dr. Fan's current CV
here.
See Dr. Fan's Google Scholar citations
here.
See Dr. Fan's publications (coming soon).
See Dr. Fan's Research page (coming soon).