Prof. Yi Cheng’s research interests lie in the field of multiphase reactor engineering in relation to the applications for energy, environment and materials. The research activities combine conventional reaction engineering (e.g., fluidization) with unconventional means of process intensification (i.e., plasmas and confined micro-channel or micro-droplets), aiming to integrate new physics and new chemistry so as to develop new processes. The current efforts are stimulated to explore the electricity-driven processes and precise production of highly value-added chemicals / materials, in which sophisticated techniques in experimental study and molecular-level theoretical aspects are involved. Several on-going projects are given below.

² Waste plastics conversion and re-utilization, involving pyrolysis, catalytic pyrolysis, molecular level kinetics, machine learning, etc.

² Microreactor technology for high-efficient and safe process development of N-vinyl compounds, involving solubility prediction by COSMO-RS and machine learning, catalysis mechanism, micro-nano-bubble technique, micro-devices and processes, CFD, etc.

² Electrochemical hydrogen production coupled with value-added oxidation of organics

² Controlled production of Janus particles by droplet-based microfluidic technique

² Modeling and simulation of multiphase microfluidics based on Lattice Boltzmann methods

² MoVNbTeO_x catalyst and structured reactor for oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene

² Hydrogen production of steam reforming in milliseconds in micro-channel reactors

² Thermal plasma pyrolysis of coal and other hydrocarbons to acetylene, ethylene and hydrogen

² UV/plasma enhanced gas-solid chlorination of PVC for cleaner production of CPVC

² CO2 conversion by electricity driven process

² Drug nanoparticles preparation by droplet-based microreactors

² Milliseconds mixing of liquids by jet mixer