As the chief engineer of China National Chemical Corporation's Shenyang Chemical Research Institute, Sheng is busy working on several major projects: establishing the National Emergency Management Department's Laboratory for Hazardous Chemicals Safety Risk Warning and Intelligent Control Technology, building the China National Chemical Corporation Chemical Safety Innovation Center, and leading the formulation of national chemical safety standards. These projects may sound somewhat obscure, but they are closely related to the daily lives of ordinary people - their food, clothing, housing, and transportation.
In 1979, the student with outstanding chemistry grades was admitted to Sun Yat-sen University, marking the beginning of her unbreakable connection with the field of chemical engineering. At that time, China's chemical industry was still relatively backward. Take pesticides as an example, most of the important pesticides were imported or produced by imitating foreign processes, with low efficiency and many potential hazards. "With the same amount of raw materials, the output of the backward process might only be half of that of others, and sometimes it would even produce toxic waste." The student had a clear understanding of the shortcomings of China's chemical industry at that time.
How can the gap be narrowed? The responsibility lies with every chemical worker! To discover more safe and environmentally friendly chemical process technologies, they worked tirelessly day and night: during the day, they conducted experiments, recorded data, and identified problems in the laboratory; at night, they stayed in the library, starting from the founding of the American Chemical Abstracts in 1907, they sorted through English publications to explore technical route clues... A large number of key process technology problems for important products were solved.
"Research on chemical reaction risks is an interdisciplinary field. To become an 'expert', one needs a foundation of being a 'generalist'." Sun devoted all his energy to this, leading the team, building platforms, and seeking methods. Hard work pays off. Since 2017, Sun led the team to develop the chemical reaction safety risk assessment technology, which has been widely applied in the national fine chemical industry. The product yield, "three wastes" emissions, and million-hour injury rate of related enterprises have all reached international advanced levels.