Bi, Tony (Xiaotao)

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Research Interests

• Particle Technology
• Fluidization and Multiphase Reactors
• Clean and Renewable Energy Systems
• Green Engineering and Sustainability
• Life Cycle Analysis

Current Research Work

• Green Engineering, Clean Energy and Sustainability: Green Engineering is the design, commercialization and use of processes and products, which are feasible and economical while minimizing impacts on ecosystems over the full life cycle. Traditional engineering focuses on the technical and economic aspects of a technology. In contrast, Green Engineering extends our research and development beyond product manufacturing to include the ecological impacts of a process/product or a technology on the renewability and sustainability of the raw materials, the toxicity and health risks of the product use, and the recycleability and degradability at the end of the product use. We are developing environmental systems and life cycle analysis tools to model and evaluate biomass energy systems, including Canadian wood pellets, BC forest residues, animal wastes, agricultural residues and solid digestate and plastic/textile wastes, as well as integrated impact assessments of biomass combustion, gasification, torrefaction, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion processes. At the same time, we are developing novel thermo-chemical-catalytic technologies to convert biomass residues to bio-fuels, biochar, torrefied pellets and renewable natural gas, with a focus on novel fluidized bed reactor design and low-cost catalyst development. Both clean energy and green engineering are key areas of my research and teaching.
• Fluidization and Multiphase Reactors: Fluidized bed reactors have been widely used in industrial processes for conducting both catalytic and non-catalytic reactions, fuel combustion, particulate drying, powder coating and granulation, electrolysis etc. I started my research career on fluidization in 1985, and have conducted research over many areas, including hydrodynamics, flow patterns and flow regimes, heat transfer, mass transfer, reactor performance testing, modeling and simulation, scaling and scale-up, commercial reactor troubleshooting etc. covering gas-solids, liquid-solids, gas-liquid-solids bubbling, turbulent and circulating fluidized beds. My current fluidization research is focused on electrostatic charging of dielectric particles in gas-solids fluidized beds and novel fluidized bed reactors for biomass thermo-chemical-catalytic conversion.