Supervised by Prof. Hsi-jen Chen, Chemical and Materials Engineering master freshman Cheng-ze Lin won the championship award of NT$50,000 with a plaque by beating candidates from 7 universities including Taiwan University and Taiwan University of Science and Technology at the 2007-8 Contest of Chemical Process Design by Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers.

The Institute’s competition topic was “Dimethyl Ether” which is an alternative less polluting energy. It can substitute the traditional liquid petroleum gas. The programming design required reduction of cost by applying the purity of dimethyl ether and production quantity. Cheng-ze Lin effectively reduced the cost by combining heat energy and that was the main reason he won the prize. He mentioned that because he had taken the course of Chemical Process Design, he chose the topic “Process Design and Heat Integration for the Production of Clean Energy: Dimethyl Ether” for the competition. He gratefully appreciated that Prof. Hsi-jen Chen, without any demur, always lent him his notebook for him to carry out the program when the CAE lab was closed during the winter vacation. As he had no one to discuss the program, he went to discuss it with Prof. Chen almost every day. He also often surfed the Internet, searching for related research, seeking for possible solutions to his problems. Without any team members, sometimes he had to face problems. So he was really grateful to Prof. Chen and other graduate students in the lab for their supervision and help. Talking about his future, he hoped to continuously research on programming design concerning bio-energy and further his graduate studies.

Hsi-jen Chen pointed out that Contest of Chemical Process Design encouraged students to apply academic knowledge, creative thinking and communicating skills to show their research work. In the course of Chemical Process Design, Cheng-ze Lin worked very hard. After he had chosen his competition topic, he often came to ask questions, and the advanced software for programming design, Aspen Plus, provided by TKU was also a big plus for him to win the award. His award was an ability guarantee for his future employment and his Process design was useful information for enterprises. ( ~Dean X. Wang )