WSU engineering professor receives Governor's Green Chemistry Award

Yinlun Huang, professor of chemical engineering and materials science, has been awarded a Michigan Green Chemistry Governor's Award for his technology that signficantly reduces the toxic waste stream stemming from the Michigan stamping industry's production lines.

Huang was among seven recipients of the award, and one of only two in the Academic category, honored Sept. 24 at a special ceremony held at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

This is the first year for the award, which was established by the Michigan Green Chemistry Roundtable in support of Gov. Jennifer Granholm's Executive Directive 2006-6, designed to celebrate innovations in green chemistry in Michigan.

The other six winners were: Dow AgroSciences (Business category); Phillip Savage, chemistry professor, University of Michigan (Academic); Grand Valley University Chemistry Department (Education), the Ann Arbor Ecology Center (Public); and Nathan Craft, chemistry major, Grand Valley State University (Student).

The Green Chemistry Program recognizes advances that either incorporate principles of green chemistry into chemical design, manufacture or use, or promote activities supporting or implementing those technologies.

The unique green solution and profitable pollution prevention theory and technologies Huang and his graduate team developed are being used at Michigan's electroplating plants to reduce hazardous wastewater as well as productions costs. The "Integrated Hazardous Chemical-Metal Near-Zero Discharge" technology is actually an integration of two technologies: a scanning system that determines the rate and flow of the hazardous chemical solvent/acid, and a recovery system.

← Back to listing