The Department of Chemical Engineering of China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing) traces its origins back to 1958, when the Department of Comprehensive Coal Utilization was established. In 1998, the Department of Chemical Engineering was formally established in Beijing, building upon the first-level discipline of Chemical Engineering and Technology. The first-level discipline of Chemical Engineering and Technology focuses on clean coal conversion and carbon neutrality technologies, serving as a key supporting discipline for implementing the strategic tasks proposed by the 20th National Congress to strengthen the clean and efficient utilization of coal and advance the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. In 1986 and 2003, the department was approved for master's and doctoral programs in Chemical Technology, respectively. In 2011, it received the right to confer doctoral degrees in the first-level discipline of Chemical Engineering and Technology, and in 2019, it was authorized to establish a postdoctoral research station in this field. In the fourth and fifth rounds of discipline evaluations, it was rated B+ and B, respectively. The department supports the university's Chemistry and Materials disciplines, which are ranked in the top 1% in the ESI, and also supports the interdisciplinary discipline of Clean Energy Studies in Beijing. The undergraduate program "Chemical Engineering and Technology" was selected as a national first-class undergraduate program construction site in 2020 and passed the China Engineering Education Accreditation in 2022.
The Department of Chemical Engineering currently has 42 full-time faculty members, including 18 professors, 16 associate professors, and 8 lecturers. The department now includes one Elsevier China Highly Cited Scholar, two scientists in the top 2% globally, one recipient of the State Council Special Allowance, one talent supported by the Ministry of Education's New Century Talent Support Program, two Beijing Teaching Masters, eight Beijing Curriculum Ideological and Political Teaching Masters, one Beijing Outstanding Youth Talent, two Beijing Excellent Youth Backbone Talents, one Beijing Science and Technology Star, one Beijing Association for Science and Technology Youth Talent, one Sun Yueqi Distinguished Scholar, and five Sun Yueqi Young Scholars. The department has one Beijing Curriculum Ideological and Political Teaching Team and one National Petroleum and Chemical Education Excellent Teaching Team. Three faculty members are stationed at the Huairou Laboratory undertaking national-level major research tasks.
Under the guidance of the university's overall goal and positioning of "building an elite education and teaching system for the energy industry and cultivating high-quality talents with a sense of social responsibility, innovative spirit, and practical ability," the Department of Chemical Engineering strengthens the "solid foundation and broad caliber" training, establishing a talent cultivation model that integrates general and specialized education. It aims to cultivate high-quality engineering and technical talents who meet the needs of the nation's chemical industry and related fields' modernization and national rejuvenation. These talents are expected to develop comprehensively in moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education, possess a sense of national pride, humanistic qualities, teamwork spirit, innovative consciousness, and international vision, and engage in scientific research, engineering design, technology development, production operation, and management in the chemical and related fields, especially coal chemical engineering. Since 1999, the department has recruited 120-150 undergraduates nationwide each year, adhering to the principle of "undergraduate education as the foundation." It has fully implemented heuristic, inquiry-based, and cooperative research-oriented teaching, strengthened process assessment and diversified evaluation, forming a distinctive educational approach of full-process tutor guidance, comprehensive coverage of innovative training, full integration of teaching and research, and pervasive ideological and political education. In recent years, the department has won one national teaching achievement award, one second prize of Beijing teaching achievement award, and four education and teaching achievement awards in the coal industry. In the past three years, the undergraduate enrollment rate has exceeded 50%, with an average of one paper published for every six undergraduates and every two undergraduates receiving provincial or ministerial level discipline competition awards.
The discipline of Chemical Engineering and Technology, facing the major strategic needs of the nation's clean and efficient coal utilization, closely focuses on the fundamental theories and key technical challenges of clean and efficient coal conversion processes under the background of carbon neutrality and carbon peaking. With the overall goal of "clean, efficient, and low-carbon," it concentrates on four directions: directional thermal conversion of coal, new functional materials based on coal, coal-related solid waste treatment and resource utilization, and the coupling utilization of coal and new energy (hydrogen energy and fuel cells) for talent cultivation and scientific research, exhibiting distinctive research features.
Since the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan," the discipline has undertaken and completed 28 major projects and tasks from the Ministry of Science and Technology, and 31 projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation, including one 863 theme project, one 973 project, and one national support plan project. It has developed new processes and methods in coal direct liquefaction oil slurry regulation and coal direct liquefaction asphalt-based materials and established the first domestic demonstration project in coal in-situ underground gasification and low-rank coal thermal upgrading, making significant contributions to the nation's clean and efficient coal conversion. Since the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan," the discipline has made continuous breakthroughs in the coupling utilization of coal and new energy (hydrogen energy and fuel cells), undertaking two key international cooperation projects in research and development and establishing China's first megawatt-scale coal gasification fuel cell power generation demonstration project. Research achievements include one second prize of the National Technological Invention Award, one first prize and one second prize of the Ministry of Education's Science and Technology Progress Award, one first prize and two second prizes of the Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation Award, and more than ten other provincial and ministerial level awards. The department has established excellent research platforms such as the Coal Industry Coal Underground Gasification Engineering Research Center, the China-Australia Energy Joint Research Center, and the National Engineering Research Center for Coal-based Slurry Fuels. Professor Han Minfang, the first chief scientist of the 973 Program (who has since moved), was selected for the Ministry of Education's Changjiang Scholars Program. The department provides theoretical and technical support for the nation's energy and chemical industry, cultivating a large number of elite talents in energy and chemical engineering.