Dr. Linda Shi Cheng is currently the R&D Director for Materials Characterization Group at Honeywell UOP. She has over 22 years of work experience at Honeywell UOP, a company that is renowned for innovative technologies that serve the petroleum refining, petrochemical, and gas processing industries. She has applied her separation expertise to bring significant advances in petrochemical technology, which has led to tremendous commercial impact, worldwide recognition as well as 15 U.S. patents.
Dr. Cheng – and other Honeywell UOP scientists and engineers – have discovered, developed and commercialized technologies to produce some of the world’s most widely used and environmentally-friendly products. The list of Dr. Cheng’s innovative contributions at Honeywell UOP includes the processes used to remove HCl from hydrocarbon streams, purification of propylene, recovery of propylene from propane, and development of the MaxEneTM process. The Maxene process, commercialized in 2013, significantly increases the yield of ethylene from naphtha crackers along with aromatics products from naphtha reformers, through molecule management.
Most recently, Dr. Cheng has led the breakthrough development and commercialization of novel adsorbents for the separation and purification of p-xylene, continuing the legacy of SorbexTM technology innovation that originate at UOP. This led to the significant production rate increases and energy savings per ton of p-xylene production for our customers. The innovations led by Dr. Cheng marked the largest step-change in separation efficiency since the initial introduction of the Parex process in early 1970s. To date, a large number of the Honeywell UOP ParexTM process units are loaded with the innovative products that Dr. Cheng and her team developed, enabling significant capital and operating efficiency for our customers. The technological breakthrough also provides a roadmap for improving other adsorbent and catalyst products for HUOP. For developing regions, as well as highly industrialized ones, these are processes and innovations that truly revolutionize the way people live and work around the world.
Dr. Cheng received her doctorate degree in chemical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY. Her bachelor and master degrees in chemical engineering are from East China University of Science and Technology.