Chinese scientists at the cutting edge in Sweden

"As China"

It’s the Chinese Year of the Horse: a symbol of travel, but also of fast success. For many of the over 35 000 Chinese living in Sweden, this year could be a good one.

Having their regular lunch meeting at a downtown restaurant, the members of the Swedish-Chinese Life Sciences Association  plan how they can help researchers to get a foothold in the market. 

Xin Wang is an administrator at the Royal Technical University. ”Chinese students compose one third to one half of the students coming from outside the EU. We have roughly 2000 PHD students here, and three to four hundred are from China.”

One of them is Huiran Lu, a doctoral student at the school of chemical engineering. Her research on batteries may prove groundbreaking. The goal: to develop a  flexible cellphone battery made mostly from wood byproducts. Sweden has a strong sustainable forestry industry of replanted and managed forests.  Wood by-products are used as a filler for the battery.

”We use the wood products because wood is cheap and environmentally friendly: I will focus on increasing the stability of the battery so we can use the battery longer.”

In a few years cell phones will be flexible and so their batteries must be as well. These developments are something Chinese manufacturers are following closely. Close ties are being maintained with the chinese green energy researchers around the world.

Dr. Mårten Behm is Huiran ’s supervisor. He says Chinese students stand-out. ”In young people there is a bigger interest in technology and science relatively speaking than we have in the western world at the moment.”

Swedish fuel cell technology caught the interest of US President Barak Obama who recently made a visit to the battery and fuel cell lab. He pressed the research teams to get their products out in the market as quickly as possible.

Lau Wu’s team has developed a powerful fuel cell that can generate energy from olive oil by-products. But they want to go further.

”Now it’s being used in several countries and we want to make the fuel cell reversible to produce gas.”

There is also Chinese-led  green energy research being done  at the Royal Technical College. Today politicians, engineers,  and industry people are here to see it. 

Weihong Yang is an award winning associate professor working on turning wood product waste into fuel.  ”We’re working on trying to reduce the technical balance to further reduce the cost of this process, and make the product of the biomass from oil to gas to be able to compete with fossil fuel.”

But professor Henrik Thunman is shaking his head. He says they will need government help to make the products competitive. 

”Green energy production will not be economically viable without subsidy. Otherwise biomass can’t compete with fossil.”

We will get the price down, says Yang, but it will take time. ”Global warming will be a bigger problem in the future. When you have to do something about this someone has to pay. There’s no free lunch.”

While Weihong Yang has been in Sweden, 13 years, Huiran Lu, is still uncertain about her future. By the time this year of the horse ends, Huiran Lu will have made her battery from wood products and may stay after her getting her PHD. ”..Or go back to China to find a position as a professor in the future.”

• Sweden
• Chinese
• scientist
• clean energy
• Ric Wasserman