By 2050, the global population is expected to increase by 2 billion people to 10 billion. This puts unprecedented stress on food, energy, and water resources. Specifically, global food production must increase by at least 70% by 2050 to feed the world's growing population. Global consumption of both energy and water will also have to grow by at least 50% between now and 2050. To meet these growing needs sustainably, the ways food and chemicals are produced must be systematically reexamined and revolutionarily redesigned. These activities require innovations in systems-level thinking and systems engineering approaches in order to make our decision-making process more efficient, more accurate, and more comprehensive. Toward this goal, in this talk, I will shed some light on how process systems engineering (PSE) could help address some of the critical challenges in industrial decarbonization and digital agriculture from a quantitative, systems-level perspective. Specifically, I plan to introduce two ongoing project: 1) sensor-based optimization and integrative learning of root-zone soil monitoring for sustainable agricultural irrigation, and 2) decarbonizing chemical process heating with electrification.
Dr. Zheyu Jiang joined the School of Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University as an Assistant Professor in August 2021. He completed his B.Ch.E. at the University of Minnesota in 2014 and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in 2018. Between 2018 and 2021, Dr. Jiang worked as a Process Development Engineer at Dow Chemical/Corteva Agriscience, where he contributed to the process development, optimization, scale-up, and manufacturing of several crop protection active ingredients. His current research interests focus on developing advanced mathematical modeling, optimization, and machine learning algorithms and tools for solving critical problems in advanced manufacturing and sustainability. In particular, he is interested in developing systems engineering tools and insights toward solving problems in advanced separations, industrial decarbonization, digital agriculture, and food-energy-water nexus.