UK-China International Particle Technology Forum XI (PTF11)

Measurement of local particle charge densities and flow structure in gas-solids fluidized beds

Biography

Dr. Bi received his BASc (1985) and MASc (1988) from Tsinghua University, and PhD (1994) from the University of British Columbia (UBC). He has been a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of British Columbia since 1997, and served as the Director (2019-2025) of UBC Clean Energy Research Centre (www.cerc.ubc.ca). He is a Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering since 2014 and Engineers Canada since 2019.

His research spans from fundamentals of fluidization and fluid-particle systems to industrial applications of fluidized bed reactors, with the current focus on development of fluidized bed reactors for biomass gasification, torrefaction, and catalytic pyrolysis, and integrated assessments of integrated bioenergy systems and biorefineries. He has published 500+ peer-reviewed papers with a Google H-Index of 93. He was the recipient of a number of awards including the AIChE Particle Technology Forum Lectureship Award (2012), CSChE Industrial Practice Award (2020), BC Bioenergy Sector Award (2022), CIESC Thermochemistry Award (2023) and International CFB & Fluidization Achievement Award (2024).

Multi-scale adhesive particle dynamics in multiphysical fields

Biography

Shuiqing Li is a tenured professor at Tsinghua University, National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. In 2004, he completed his postdoctoral research at Tsinghua University and promoted to professor in 2012 until now. Currently, he serves as the vice dean of the Research Office at Tsinghua University, the Deputy Director of the National Nanoscience Center, and the Director of the Tsinghua University-Dongfang Electric Future Energy and Equipment Joint Research Institute. He holds the position of Deputy Head of the 14th Five-Year Plan on "Coal Clean and Efficient Utilization Technology" of the Ministry of Science and Technology, is a member of the China Society of Engineering Thermophysics and the Deputy Director of the Combustion Division, the Deputy Director of the Aerospace Combustion and Heat Transfer Committee of the Chinese Aeronautical Society, the Co-Chair of the International Combustion Conference, and a member of the editorial board of journals such as Progress in Energy and Combustion Science.

 He has delivered invited reports at international academic conferences over 20 times and completed an academic monograph "Adhesive Particle Flow" published by Cambridge University Press. His research focuses on core technologies in areas such as low-carbon flexible combustion, dual-mode chemical/electric propulsion and nano flame synthesis. 

To date, he has published over 250 SCI papers in top journals such as Phys. Rev. Lett., Combust. Flame, and J. Fluid. Mech. In 2020, he was elected a Fellow of The Combustion Institute, and in 2025, he received the National Natural Science Award.

Multi-scale simulation for a world model of granular systems

Biography

Prof. Wei Ge, born in 1970, got his B. Sc. Degree in 1992 and then Ph. D Degree in 1998, both from Harbin Institute of Technology, China. He is a professor at Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the director of its Huairou Interdisciplinary Research Center for Mesoscience; He is the chair of Simulation and Modeling Committee of Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China (CIESC). He serves as editor for Chemical Engineering Science and international advisory board member for Particuology. He proposed pseudo-particle modeling to bridge microscale and macroscale behaviors in multiphase reaction systems, improved the energy-minimization multi-scale model for gas-solid and gas-liquid systems, led the development of the Mole series multiscale supercomputing software and hardware systems and virtual process engineering platforms. He has published over 250 journal papers and co-authored 5 monographs. He received the Distinguished Young Scholar Fund from National Natural Science Foundation of China, awarded the Outstanding Youth in Basic Science from the Zhou Guangzhao Foundation, and received the Hou Debang Chemical Technology Innovation Award from CIESC.

From refining to integrated refining-chemicals-mesoscale CFD modeling for catalytic fluidized bed reactor design and optimization

Biography

Bona Lu received her BSc from Zhejiang University in 2003 and PhD from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2009. She was promoted to Professor at IPE in 2020. In 2025, she was appointed as a Chang Jiang Distinguished Professor by the Ministry of Education and joined the University of CAS as a Tenured Distinguished Professor.

She works on multiphase transport, reaction engineering, multiscale modeling, and reactor optimization in heterogeneous catalysis, and has recently expanded to medical image data mining for neurological disorders and lithium‑battery electrolyte simulation. The gas-solid drag model she developed is embedded in ANSYS FLUENT and Siemens Star‑CCM+. Since 2005, she has closely collaborated with Sinopec RIPP on the coupling of diameter‑transformed fluidized beds (DTFBs) and catalytic reactions, enabling quantitative design and nationwide industrial application. She has authored 70+ papers, 2 monographs, and led 20+ projects. She serves on the organizing committee of the international renowned journal the Innovation, and as advisor/committee member for the CFB conference and the International Forum on Multiphase Flow Technology.

Triboelectrification of particulate solids – measurement and modelling

Biography

Mojtaba Ghadiri is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Leeds, UK. His research focuses on understanding particulate solids by linking bulk behaviour to single-particle properties and interactions, supported by simulations using the Discrete Element Method (DEM) coupled with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). His application interests include triboelectrification (his talk’s topic), cohesive powder flow and fluidisation, particle size reduction and enlargement, and electrical and environmental phenomena in particulate systems.

Mojtaba is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. His awards include the Geldart Medal (2023), the KONA Award (2019), the Chemistry for Industry Award (2022), and the Iinoya Award (2010). He received the KONA Distinguished Service Award (2014) as Europe and Africa Editor of KONA Powder and Particle Journal. Until July 2019, he served as a consultant to the International Fine Particle Research Institute (IFPRI) on particle size reduction. Further information on current projects, collaborators and publications can be found at: http://ghadiri-group.leeds.ac.uk/.

Numerical simulations of complex multiphase flows

Biography

Omar Matar FREng, FAPS, FIChemE, is a Professor of Fluid Mechanics, and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London. His research interests include the use of multi-scale, physics-informed, data-driven methods for the solution of complex non-isothermal multiphase flows with phase change. He has published over 390 papers, with over 16,400 citations, and H-index 70. He is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow, Droplet, and Data-Centric Engineering.