Recently, the national finals of the 20th “Tengen Design Cup” National University Chemical Engineering Design Competition concluded at Ningxia University. The team “Seize the Day for Alkene” from the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Xi’an Petroleum University strove tenaciously and claimed the Grand Prize in the national finals once again. The team was supervised by Liu Jurong, Song Shaofu, Lu Suhong, Li Xiaohui and Fan Zheng, and consisted of students Wang Ziheng, Liu Zhengkang, Mi Qian, Wang Peiwang and Mao Xiaohui. Following its first National Grand Prize in this competition in 2025, the university has achieved the outstanding feat of winning this top award for two consecutive years. Meanwhile, the team was awarded the Excellent Award for Application of Modern Design Methods (only three awarded nationwide this year), marking a historic breakthrough for universities in Western China in this special competition award.
Guided by the Steering Committee for Chemical Engineering Majors under the Ministry of Education and sponsored by the Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China and the China Association of Chemical Engineering Education, the National University Chemical Engineering Design Competition is a Category A national disciplinary competition for general universities. It ranks as China’s highest-specification and most influential undergraduate engineering practice event for chemical engineering majors. A total of 4,690 teams involving more than 23,000 students from 503 universities across the country took part in this year’s competition. After rigorous selection across seven sub-divisions, only 74 teams qualified for the national finals.
The competition was set around the project of “designing a clean-production branch plant for styrene for a large chemical enterprise”, featuring a green and low-carbon development orientation. During the preparation phase, the student participants closely followed the competition theme and finished a full spectrum of chemical plant design work, including process demonstration, process simulation, equipment selection, plant layout, engineering drawing, and safety and environmental assessment. They continuously refined design documents and defense materials. Combining theoretical teaching with engineering practice, the supervising faculty team provided full-process guidance ranging from process optimization and the application of digital tools to defense presentation. At the national finals, the team earned high recognition from judges and experts by virtue of their solid professional foundation, comprehensive and rigorous engineering scheme, digital design deliverables and fluent defense.
Winning the National Grand Prize for two consecutive years and achieving a major breakthrough in the special award represents a landmark achievement of the university’s efforts to advance the construction of Emerging Engineering Education and implement the talent cultivation model of “promoting teaching, learning and innovation through competitions”. Rooted in its petrochemical characteristics, the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering integrates disciplinary competitions into the whole process of talent training. It links classroom teaching, practical training and disciplinary competitions, improves an integrated mechanism covering competition organization, faculty supervision and resource support, and strives to cultivate students’ engineering literacy, innovative thinking and teamwork capabilities.
Taking this award as an opportunity, the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering will further deepen education and teaching reform, strengthen practical education platforms, cultivate more high-quality innovative chemical engineering talents, and boost the university’s discipline development and high-quality growth.
