National Engineering Research Center of Industrial Crystallization Technology (NERCICT) was founded as up to date the only national research center in crystallization field, which was approved in 2009 by Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) (No. 2008FU115X12).
NERCICT is committed to the innovation in industrial crystallization technology and the R&D of new-type of crystallization equipment. Now NERCICT is the domestically leading, world-class research institution with high reputation in crystallization field after more than 30 years of development.
The headquarter of NERCICT locates in Tianjin University, which includes the fundamental research laboratories and an large analytical center. The branch in TEDA is named as “Tianda Fangyuan Industrial Crystallization Technology Co., Ltd.” which has the pilot trial plants and a manufacturing center of key diversion units and act as the service window of NERCICT towards the growing demands for the promotion of crystallization technology in various industries.
On the basis of decades of development, it took 120 million from varied sources to construct NERCICT in the past several years. NERCICT now has a total area of 21063.76 m2, floor area of 8109 m2 in which the labs cover 3540 m2 and pilot plants cover 4017 m2. The total value of the equipment and facilities exceeds 130 million. Aiming at the real technology problems of crystallization in various industries, NERCICT continuously develops innovative technologies and equipment in crystallization in the past decades which covers from lab trial, to process & equipment design, and to the final industrialization.
There are 125 employees of different level of talents and personnel in NERCICT, such as academician of Chinese Engineering Academy (CAE), Cheung Kong Scholar professor (MOE), specially introduced returnee professors, winners of “New Century Excellent Talents”, associate professors/senior engineers, and lecturers. NERCICT is a multi-disciplinary and very innovative group with reasonable age structure, and plenty of experience in industrialization. NERCICT is very active in academic areas. It cultures more than 80 graduate students every year. There are many international cooperation on various aspects of crystallization technology between NERCICT and world-class research institutions, such as the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics (Germany), MIT, University of Michigan (USA), Rice University (USA), Penn State (USA), UCD (Ireland), and University of Western Ontario (Canada) et al.
After more than 30 years of research on industrial crystallization technology and equipment, NERCICT has established its own patent group and experts system for general crystallization processes and thermodynamic/kinetic databases of more than 100 kinds of crystal products. The research goal of NERCICT is to cover all the research from lab to pilot and then to industrialization. NERCICT undertook the National Five-year Plan of Key Project Program continuously from the 6th to now the 12th. In the past several years, NERCICT obtained 81 important projects from both the government and the industry. NERCICT has built more than 100 advanced production lines in 20 domestic regions and recently has trained 938 engineering technicians for the industry.
NERCICT has won a lot of awards in the past decades due to its continuous efforts and huge achievements in both academics and industry of industrial crystallization, which include (but not limited to) the 2nd Prize of National Award for Technological Invention (2008), 2nd Class Award of National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology (1996, 1999, 2010), 3rd place winner of National Award for Technological Invention (1996), 1st place winner of Tianjin Municipal Award for Technology Invention (2007), winner of 11th and 13th China Patent Award (2009, 2011), 1st place winner of the Award for National Quality Course (2010),etc.
Facing the incoming future where the promotion of crystallization technology in industry will be more and more essential for the development of solid products, NERCICT will proceed continuously on the current basis to devote itself to the development of technology from lab to pilot and to industrialization, serving the manufacturing in China and providing technology support to the promotion of the functional crystal product and industry.
