Jointly organised by the HKIE EVD and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Supported by the HKWMA, HKIQEP and CIWEM (Hong Kong Branch)
Programme Highlights
The
Green Innovation Webinar Series aims to enhance the collaboration between HKIE
and universities through exchanging new environmental technologies and novel
research projects ideas via the interactive online platform. This is the third episode
consisting of two talks to be delivered by the academic staff from Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
1. Key Parameters of Wood
Wastes Conversion for Value-Added Products
Wood
is a valuable nature resource with its proper utilization shall mitigate the
global warming. However, over-utilization of woody products and generation of
yard wastes have made this resource an environmental problem in Hong Kong.
Woody biomass of different species, parts, and conditions, in fact can offer
many physiochemical properties for valorization. From construction materials,
fuels, to chemicals, this presentation introduce the key characteristics of
wood and some state-of-the-art techniques to convert woody biomass into
valuable products. Briefly, wood-based composite materials are composed of
conditioned woods and plastics which offers key properties for non-structural
and indoor decoration. Defibrillation and pulping of wood chips creates high
quality fibers and papers, although the perspective role has been gradually
replaced by plastics and electronic instruments. The potential of
lignocellulosic biorefinery is significant. Lignin, hemicelluloses, celluloses
are important building-block chemicals in the plant cell walls of woods, which
can serve as functional precursors of many valuable products after chemical,
physical, and biological processes. With further recognitions of the values in
woods, it is our hope that more research and applications can be practiced to complete
the circular economy of this green materials utilized throughout the human
history and the future.
2. Sustainability at
Solar-Water Nexus
Among
the big three renewables of hydropower, solar energy, and wind power, solar
energy has the highest natural abundance and the lowest geographical
limitation. In this presentation, two solar energy-based technologies will be
presented as our recent efforts to supplement fresh water from unconventional
sources and to enhance solar-energy conversion by water-based approaches. (1)
The photovoltaic-membrane distillation (PV-MD) utilizes the waste heat of
PV-panel to drive water distillation within multistage MD design. The
state-of-the-art PV-MD is able to produce freshwater at a record-breaking rate
and cools PV panels at the same time. The PV-MD is poised to simultaneously
generate electricity and fresh water where conventional approaches are not
effective. (2) There is plenty of water vapor constantly preserved in the
earth’s atmosphere. Sorption based atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) is
emerging as an attractive and clean way of producing fresh water. AWH has very
recently be extended to help cool PV panel and a 19% electricity increase was
demonstrated at field tests.
Speakers
Dr Ben Leu
Associate Professor,
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, PolyU
Ir
Dr Shao-Yuan (Ben) Leu obtained his BSc/MSc degrees from the School of Forestry
at the National Taiwan University (1993-97) and received his MPhil/PhD from the
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of UCLA (2003-09) on biological
systems. He was a lecturer at UC Riverside (2010-11) and postdoctoral fellow at
USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin (2011-13). At PolyU, Dr
Leu established the Green Energy Process Laboratory which aims to characterize
and fractionate the physiochemical structure of plant cell wall, hence forging
thermo-/bio-conversion theories of woody materials into practices. For more
details of Dr Leu’s team, please refer to https://www.polyu.edu.hk/cee/~syleu/.
Dr Wang Peng
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering, PolyU
Dr
Peng Wang obtained his PhD from University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
in 2008. He joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
in 2009 as a founding faculty member. He was the program chair of Environmental
Science and Engineering at KAUST from 2013 to 2017. He joined The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University in August 2019. Dr Wang’s research interests are in
environmental nanotechnology and renewable energy-driven clean water
production. He received the prestigious ‘The Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz
International Prize for Water’ (PSIPW) in 2020 and the Nanova
Frontier Research Award from the Chinese-American Professors in Environmental
Engineering and Science (CAPEES) in 2020. Dr Wang serves as an associate editor of Environmental Science &
Technology, an academic journal published by American Chemical Society (ACS)
since 1967.
Language
English
Registration &
Enquiries
The
seminar is free of charge. For registration, please complete the online Google Form. Successful
applicants will be notified before the event. For enquiries, please
contact Mr Benjamin Lam at bencamay1119@gmail.com or Mr Fredrick Leong at fredleong@yahoo.com. Attendance
certificate will be awarded after the webinar.