A Faculty Member from our Sschool Publishes a Review Article in AIChE Journal, the Top International Journal in
Chemical Engineering
News Release (Correspondent: Liu Jinfeng) Recently, Professor Xia Dong, a young faculty member of our college, published a review article titled Flash Joule-Heating Technology for Material Manufacturing, Processing, and Emerging Applications in AIChE Journal, the top international journal in the field of chemical engineering. Yuan Xiaoxi, an undergraduate student of the School of Chemical Engineering and Pharmacy, served as the first author, and Professor Xia Dong served as the corresponding author. Wuhan Institute of Technology was the first affiliation.
As a cutting-edge material fabrication technology, Flash Joule Heating (FJH) features an ultra-low carbon footprint and exceptional energy efficiency. This technology is rapidly advancing from laboratory-scale research to industrial application frontiers, attracting extensive attention from both academia and industry. As a revolutionary electrothermal processing technique with unique working mechanisms and tremendous application potential, FJH is regarded as a transformative technology that can reshape the future production landscape of high-end advanced materials. The core principle of FJH lies in the utilization of instantaneous, high-intensity current pulses to rapidly heat conductive raw materials to extreme temperatures exceeding 3000 Kelvin within milliseconds. Such ultrafast heating and non-equilibrium processes trigger drastic physicochemical transformations of materials, enabling the efficient fabrication of a wide range of new materials with distinctive properties. Currently, FJH has demonstrated promising application prospects in multiple key fields, including graphene production, high-value waste conversion, and high-performance material synthesis. Against the backdrop of growing global demands for green manufacturing and carbon neutrality goals, FJH has emerged as one of the foundational technologies for sustainable materials engineering, benefiting from its nearly zero direct carbon emissions, superior energy utilization efficiency, and streamlined processing procedures.
In recent years, fundamental research and process development centered on FJH have witnessed explosive growth, with relevant achievements frequently published in top-tier academic journals. Despite its broad application prospects, the large-scale industrialization on FJH technology still faces a series of challenges in process scaling-up, equipment stability, cost control and industrial standardization. Therefore, it is critical to systematically review the latest research progress of FJH and identify the core scientific challenges and technical bottlenecks across its diverse application fields to facilitate its future development. In addition to comprehensively sorting out FJH-enabled applications, this review puts forward forward-looking insights and targeted coping strategies to assist in breaking through the core bottlenecks restricting the development of FJH technology, thereby accelerating the early implementation of the industrial revolution and practical production applications led by FJH.
Founded in 1955 and published by Wiley-Blackwell, AIChE Journal is a world-leading top journal in the field of chemical engineering. Centering on chemical engineering disciplines, the journal covers 15 technical directions including biomolecular engineering, reaction engineering and thermodynamics, and continuously expands its research scope to emerging fields such as biotechnology and environmental engineering. (Reviewed by: Yang Haibo, Gu Shuangxi)
Article Link: https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aic.70215
Profile of Professor Xia Dong
Dr. Xia Dong is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and Pharmacy, Wuhan Institute of Technology. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Leeds (UK) in November 2020, and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at the National Institute for Materials Science (Japan), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), and the University of Oxford (UK). He joined Wuhan Institute of Technology as a faculty member in January 2025. He has published over 30 SCI-indexed papers in prestigious journals, including Journal of the American Chemical Society (2 publications), AIChE Journal (5 publications), Advanced Functional Materials, and Small (2 publications). His current research focuses on the electric-driven transient ultra-high-temperature synthesis of alloy catalysts and their applications in industrial catalysis for clean energy production.
