Guiyan Zang is an associate professor in the Washington State University Tri-Cities School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as an INEF faculty fellow with a background in mechanical engineering. She earned her PhD in 2019 from the University of Iowa, where she cultivated a research focus on thermodynamics and the relationship between heat and energy in power-generating systems.
Since then, she has applied her research expertise toward a better understanding of how emerging energy technologies operate at a larger scale, using two methodologies known as techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA). The former looks to investigate the economic feasibility and efficiency of an energy system based on things like fuel resource availability and consumption, whereas the latter deals with evaluating the long-term sustainability and environmental impacts of the energy system from beginning to end.
As such, Zang’s work is still based fundamentally on mechanical and chemical engineering, but incorporates elements of economics and systems design research as they apply to power-generating technologies.
“For the system design I need to get the mass and energy balance, and then using the mass and energy balance I can do the TEA to evaluate the cost and the LCA to evaluate the emission,” Zang says. “I can also look at the supply chain to see where the resources are and where the demand is — and to link the resources and the demand.”
As an example project, Zang said she is currently assisting one outside research group in its long-term efforts to bring an experimental biomass conversion technology into full-scale production — using TEA, LCA, and simulation to provide helpful insight and ideas for potential improvements to the core system design.
“They can convert biomass into battery material, into polymers, into liquid fuels. But they don’t know the cost. They don’t know what will happen if they want to scale up their technology,” Zang said. “So I can help them to scale their very small, experimental design to something very large-scale — comparable with a current industry plant. And then I can evaluate the cost and the emission for their technology, and my research output can help them to optimize their experimental design.”
Before starting at WSU, Zang worked as a techno-economic analysis group lead at the MIT Energy Initiative in Massachusetts and as a data modeling analyst at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. One of the reasons why WSU Tri-Cities and INEF caught her eye, Zang said, was the campus’s proximity and strong research ties to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland.
“I really enjoy the research environment at the national labs,” she said. “The close location to PNNL is important to me, and I also want to engage in more activities with students. I’m changing my role to faculty, but I can still keep the collaboration, keep the working style, and keep the research part close.”
INEF’s collaborative, systems-level approach to energy research and educational mentoring opportunities are another draw for Zang.
“Working for [INEF] will help me take my research results and convert it into real-world impact very fast, and it is easy for me to collaborate with other faculty members at INEF and to connect with the industry,” Zang said.