Cleaning and Greening: Dean of Engineering leads the way to cleaner energy
1 April 2016
Under the leadership of Prof. Wong Ching-ping, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at CUHK and Fellow of S.H. Ho College, the University has become a ground-breaking institution in terms of its work on renewable energy. Since 2014, it has won substantial backing to fund research that it is leading on that front.The Hong Kong government has awarded a grant of HK$60.33 million (US$7.8 million) in funding. CUHK is contributing another HK$13.8 million, with the other universities involved adding another HK$3 million. CUHK is cooperating with Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and The University of Hong Kong in the work. In the 2013/14 exercise of the Theme-based Research Scheme by the University Grants Committee, only three projects were funded. So what is the weight of expectation? “Heavy,” Professor Wong says. “We have to make sure the money is well spent and we get something out of it.” Professor Wong, who also holds a post in CUHK’s Department of Electronic Engineering, knows very well how to produce results. He spent 19 years with AT&T Bell Labs and 15 years with Georgia Tech before joining CUHK, focusing on semiconductor packaging. He had already been, as a graduate student, the first person to synthesize the first known lanthanide porphryn, a heavy-metal element porphryn complex, which has properties that appear to help combat cancer. At CUHK, he has been working with Prof. Zhao Ni, also in CUHK’s Electronic Engineering Department, as well as their team of students and post-doctoral collaborators, on asymmetric super-capacitors. Those are vital for the storage of green energy, since solar and wind power are intermittent. “You want that power for the evening,” Professor Wong notes. The research team that Professors Wong and Zhao lead has developed nanostructured metal oxide-carbon composites for asymmetric super-capacitors that exhibit high energy and power densities of 98.0 W h kg-1 and 22,826 W kg-1. Super-capacitors have great power density but low energy density, while a battery has low power density but high energy density. The CUHK team is working to combine the two to form a hybrid “capaciterry.” For details of the feature, please click here.
