From May 31 to June 2, the national finals of the Second National College Student Chemical Engineering Process Digital Innovation Competition, hosted by the China Education Association of Chemical Industry, were held at Nanjing Tech University. After two days of intense competitions, both the "He Strong, Let Him Be Strong" postgraduate team and the "Liu Fang Qian Gu Team" undergraduate team from CUMTB’s School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering won first prizes in the national finals. Cao Junya, a teacher from the same school, served as a member of the competition's expert committee and as a special judge in both the preliminary review and the finals.
The National College Student Chemical Engineering Process Digital Innovation Competition, organized by the China Education Association of Chemical Industry, focuses on digital innovation and aims to promote the quality-focused development of chemical engineering education. It seeks to stimulate interdisciplinary integration with intrinsic motivation and foster compound and innovative talents to meet the challenges of the new technological revolution and industrial transformation. This initiative serves national strategic and regional development needs, advancing higher education in chemical engineering towards smartization, digitalization, and informatization, thereby providing new insights and directions for the transformation and upgrading of the chemical industry.
In early September 2023, the competition announced the theme "Optimization Project for the Technological Transformation of a Gas Fractionation Unit in a Certain Enterprise", based on real production units provided by the enterprise. This included process flow diagrams, equipment lists, material balance sheets, process operation manuals, equipment overviews, and critical operational data. After forming teams and registering, our university's teams comprehensively utilized the provided data to digitally simulate the production process, offering digital solutions such as steady-state modeling, dynamic modeling, and graphic configuration. They validated operational start-up and shutdown plans, fault descriptions, and fault handling strategies for their feasibility. Preparation for the competition lasted over eight months, during which the faculty advisors from School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering led the teams in overcoming challenges, conducting software simulations, applying digital twinning, submitting works, and participating in multiple internal defenses. They continuously refined and polished their works, integrating multiple disciplines such as chemical engineering, automatic control, and software. The quality and excellence of their work were unanimously recognized by the judging panel, leading them to emerge victorious with outstanding achievements in the competition.
