First-ever Agostini Prize awarded to Ohio State engineering professor

Bridget VanZandt
Thu, 29 May 2025 00:10:13 +0000
Campus, Instagram Page, News, Babcock & Wilcox, Biomolecular engineering, campus, carbon dioxide, Chemical engineer, chemical looping, Clean Energy, coal, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, energy, environment, Liang-Shi Fan, ohio state, Peter Mohler, physics, Pierre Agostini, Pierre Agostini Prize, science, scientists, speciality, students

Liang-Shi Fan with Pierre Agostini, Walter “Ted” Carter and Board of Trustees Chairman John Zeiger after accepting the Pierre Agostini Prize. Credit: Courtesy of The Ohio State University

For inventive and creative research, the Pierre Agostini Prize highlights Ohio State professors’ outstanding work in their field. Liang-Shi Fan was the first recipient.

Fan, university professor and C. John Easton professor in engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, was awarded the prize on May 21, according to Ohio State news.

Fan won the prize primarily for his work with chemical looping, a process that can use fossil fuels, biomass and plastic waste to help generate electricity without releasing carbon dioxide, a gas linked to climate change.?

The award was created in honor of Ohio State Professor Pierre Agostini, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023. Now considered the university’s most “prestigious award for scholarly and artistic achievement” it recognizes “ground-breaking work that decisively contributes to the progress of one or more fields or changes that field’s direction,” according to the award’s website.

Fan’s award earned praise from other faculty.

“Professor Fan’s pioneering contributions have earned him over 100 awards and honors globally across academia, government and industry, and we are so pleased to honor him yet again at Ohio State as the first recipient of the Agostini Prize,” Peter Mohler, executive vice president for research, innovation and knowledge, said in an article from Ohio State News.

Fan works as a chemical engineer in clean energy, with a goal of reshaping the future of sustainable technology.?

Fan said he believes there are two possible fuels for which chemical looping would work. The first is coal, which is something we don’t typically associate with clean energy.

Coal is a solid, mainly being processed in the presence of gas or a liquid, Fan said. Since it has two-phases, there is a lot to learn about their interactions with each other, their fluid dynamics and heat mass transfers, Fan said in an interview.

“I like students to pay attention to those types of complex multi-phase systems in addition to multi-scale,” Fan said. “So this is the kind of thing that I would like to advocate for the new generations.”

Fan also mentioned working with natural gas, as it is “much easier in terms of dealing with compared to a biomass material solid.”?

Fan said it is more difficult to minimize pollutants when using coal because of its complex ingredients, including sulfur, which is linked to acid rain. Chemical looping allows carbon dioxide to be the only byproduct taken out compared to other methods where that’s not possible, he said.?

“The biomass is carbon in our hydrogen, oxygen, it has some, a little bit sulfur there as well,” Fan said. “And so, in coal, you’re going to have more complex ingredients. So the idea is that challenging things is how we can just take out the carbon dioxide, and chemical looping can do that. But at the same time many other pollutants still needed to be under control as well.”

Fan said he been in talks with Babcock & Wilcox, an energy and environmental technology company, and is assured that chemical looping can be used in energy production.

“One needs to be confident that this is commercializable,” Fan said. “If we’ve proven this really can be commercialized, it will generate a lot of excitement from the community.”

Fan said he has mentored future scientists to continue making breakthroughs, like his work with chemical looping.?

Fan went on to explain that those students will be able to pursue any specialties they want in the science field, like engineering. However, he said he hopes that students will remember the information they learned in previous years to promote their future ideas.