How Professor Liang-Shih Fan is doing remarkable work
The first winner of the Pierre Agostini Prize is putting Ohio State on the map with his work on clean energy technology.
Liang-Shih Fan is photographed near the chemical reactor in his laboratory, located in the basement of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry Building (aka CBEC). (Photo by Corey Wilson)
Editor’s note: This story is part of a “Proud They’re Ours” series that usually runs only in the print version of Ohio State Alumni Magazine. The series features Buckeyes who’ve accomplished great things or made a significant difference for people, planet, industry or culture. To learn how to receive the print edition, visit this alumni association webpage.
Closing the loop
Rice husks. Corn cobs. Tree bark. With the right technology, even waste can power the world. Liang Shih-Fan has spent the past 30 years developing a way to convert coal, natural gas, plastic and everyday plant waste into energy without emitting pollution. So have the world’s leading fossil fuel companies. But where they tried and failed, the professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering succeeded. It all comes down to the specific movement of microscopic metal oxide particles. When a fossil fuel goes into a pressurized reactor, these particles make it possible to convert that fuel into energy or other chemical products while capturing carbon dioxide before it escapes.
A trade secret, Fan’s metal oxide formulation provided the missing piece. He has licensed his technology to energy technology companies now running commercial projects to validate the chemical looping process.
Back to basics
Growing up in Taiwan in a family of math and engineering professors, Fan learned the value of mastering the fundamentals. “To create a process that is commercially viable, you must be a scientist as well as an engineer,” Fan says. “You have to understand how reactions take place on molecular, particle, reactor and system scales. The final step is to understand how it makes financial sense. That’s when you know you have something that can benefit society.”
Dean Ayanna Howard immediately recognized the large-scale significance of chemical looping when she joined the College of Engineering in 2021. As data centers multiply, so does the need for clean energy. “As a society, we have to create more energy in order to accelerate technological innovation,” she says. “Dr. Fan has created a way to do this safely and effectively.”
Eyes on the prize
Since joining the faculty at Ohio State in 1978, Fan has published more than 500 journal articles, earned 90 U.S. patents, advised more than 120 graduate students and been elected to the national academy of engineering or sciences in eight countries. According to Rushikesh Joshi ’23 MS, ’24 PhD, one of Fan’s former teaching assistants and research team members, the man behind the powerhouse resumé is a genuinely kind, devoted leader. “I have seen Dr. Fan on his busiest days, and he always makes the time to focus on the material with students,” Joshi says. “He is a teacher first.”
This year, Fan will have to make room on his shelf for another accolade: The Pierre Agostini Prize, Ohio State’s most prestigious award for scholarly or artistic achievement, named after the emeritus professor who received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. “I’m extraordinarily honored to receive this award from the school I have devoted my life to,” Fan says. “My vision is to put Ohio State on the map for technology that makes a global impact.”
