Jie Li

Jie Li is a principal chemical engineer at Argonne National Laboratory advancing energy-efficient and scalable material technologies through innovative reactor design and a deep understanding of fluid-particle systems.

Biography

Highlights

Jie Li is a principal chemical engineer in Argonne National Laboratory’s Applied Materials Division. He specializes in fluid-particle systems and reactor technologies to advance energy-efficient solutions. He is a leader in computer simulations of dense multiphase flows and leads research on scalable processes for manufacturing advanced materials. With expertise in nanoscale materials, Li collaborates with national and global partners to develop technologies for real-world applications, including energy storage, hydrogen systems, and smart building materials.

“Chemical engineers play a key role in material manufacturing, especially nanoscale materials, which are my area of expertise.” — Argonne Research Scientist Jie Li

Research Focus

Li’s research focuses on understanding and optimizing fluid-particle interactions to enable innovative, scalable processes for advanced materials. His expertise spans computational fluid dynamics, continuous flow reactor technologies, and nanoscale material synthesis. His current projects emphasize the development and upscaling of high-performance electrocatalysts, hydrogen systems, and materials for applications such as smart windows, fuel cells, and next-generation energy technologies.

Impact

Li’s work bridges fundamental science and real-world applications, accelerating the transition to more advanced technologies. Collaborating with multidisciplinary teams and scaling lab-based technologies for industrial use ensures that Li’s research contributes directly to energy abundance goals.

Jie Li is a principal chemical engineer in the Applied Materials Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He focuses on understanding the fundamental aspect of fluid-particle systems to enable advanced powder process technologies.

Li is an expert on fluidization and pioneered computer simulations of dense gas-solid multiphase flows, in which both particle-particle interactions and particle-fluid interactions are considered via coupling computation fluid dynamics (CFD) and granular dynamics (GD), a particle version of the traditional molecular dynamics). His work elucidates the fundamental underlying gas fluidization instability of bubbling and clustering flows, which originates from the nonlinearity of the G-S interaction and is further augmented by energy dissipation among inter-particle collisions. Based on the theoretical insights, he proposed three methods to improve fluidization quality via pressurization to balance the forces acting on particles, surface modification of particles to reduce collisional energy dissipation, and coherently modulating the bed using fluid pulse to achieve intimate G-S contact.

He is pursuing the development of a novel electrified gas fluidization technology, with a focus on “thermal plasma,” to modernize this centennial fossil fuels-based process with ultrafast, energy-efficient one and manufacture the next generation of renewable fuels, such as biomass, renewable fuels of non-biological origin, and carbon fuels recycled from waste CO2 and plastics. Also, he is working on the development of an innovative non-thermal plasma-driven electrolysis process aiming to ultrafast manufacture ultrasmall particulate materials as well as efficiently synthesize energy-intensive chemicals, including ammonia and methanol.

In 2009, Li joined the process R&D and scale-up group at the Materials Engineering Research Facility (MERF). He develops modern continuous flow reactor (CFR) process technologies that can replace the historical batch type of reactors and synthesize and scale up advanced nanoscale materials with improved performance.

He focuses on designing an innovative reactor with an excellent fluid contact/mixing mechanism that can appropriately implement the “hot injection” and/or “heating up” strategies using the engineering method to enable upscaling syntheses of various functionalized nanomaterials.

Li participates in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Roll-to-Roll consortium, contributing to material synthesis and scaleup of electrocatalysts for fuel cell and electrolyzer applications. As a principal investigator, his research is sponsored by labs, DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. In addition, Li serves as a reviewer for many funding agencies and journals in chemistry, materials and chemical and nuclear engineering.

Since 2006, Li has served in DOE’s environment management program as a subject matter expert and certified leading technical reviewer with a focus on thermal aspects for the safety analysis report of packages for transporting radioactive materials, providing numerous technical evaluation reports.

Collaboration and mentorship are central to Li’s approach. He emphasizes the importance of building multidisciplinary teams to tackle complex challenges and advancing technologies that serve both industry and society. Guided by his philosophy of deep, thorough exploration and a commitment to learning, Li’s work continues to shape technologies that benefit people and the planet.

Read the latest Argonne news about JIE LI:

Next-Gen nanoparticle synthesis brings economical production to batteries, smart windows and more

Argonne has a patented hydrothermal synthesis process that, for the first time, enables the scalable manufacturing of highly valuable nanoparticles, including thermochromic VO2 for smarter windows.

Department of Energy awards $3.15 million to Argonne to support collaborations with industry

Awards come from DOE’s Technology Commercialization Fund.

Education

Ph.D. in Computational Fluid Dynamics for Multiphase Flows, Twente University (2003)
Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1998)
M.S. in Chemical Engineering, Northwest University (P.R. China) (1988)
B.S. in Chemical Engineering, Northwest University (P.R. China) (1985)

Honors and Awards

Lead author of a paper that won the 2003~2006 CES Most-Cited-Paper Award (Chem. Eng. Sci.)
Dutch Fundamental Science Foundation (NWO) Postdoctoral fellow (1999)
Senior Member of the American Inst. of Chem. Eng. (AIChE)
Member of Chinese Particulate Soc.
Invited article reviewer for Chem. Eng. Sci., Powder Tech., AIChE J., Chem. Eng., Applied Energy, Composite Sci. & Tech., Energy & Fuels
Chem. Eng. Comm., IEC Res., Chemical Engineering & Processing (France), Particuology (China), Catalysis Communications, and ASME Pressure Vessel and Piping Conference
Invited author for journals, book chapters, and books, e.g., CES, Chem. Eng. Comm.
Invited Session Chair for the 5^th World Congress on Particle Science and Technology
Invited subject matter expert and technical reviewer for evaluating many concept papers and full proposals and conducting panel reviews for ANL LDRD, DOE ARPA-e, DOE Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office, DOE Office of Science SBIR/STTR, Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP), and DOE Office of Nuclear, Innovative Nuclear Research Integration (INRI) Office.

“Deep understanding of the science is critical. Doing simulations and increasing your understanding gives you much more capability to innovate and create something new.” — Argonne Research Scientist Jie Li

Select Publications

Jie Li, Mai Kim Tran, and Ralph Muehleisen, “Process for Rapidly Manufacturing Ultrasmall Phase-Change VO2 Nanomaterial”, US 12,037,258 B2, July 16, 2024.
Owen S. Wostoupal, Justin Griffith, Kowsalya Devi Rasamani, Elena Shevchenko, Xiao-Min Lin, Tao Xu, and Jie Li, “Advanced VO2/Polymer Nanocomposite Smart Window Films Using VO2 Nanoparticles from High-Throughput Flow Synthesis”, ACS Appl. Opt. Mater. 2024, 2, 262−275, (cover page).
H. Tang, P. Liu, S. Li, B. Zheng, H. Zhao, Y. Dong, Y. Huang, J. Li, B. Arigong, “A Fully Additively Manufactured Reconfigurable Millimeter-Wave Bandpass Filter Based on VO2 Dielectric Layer”, 2024 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium-IMS 2024, 733-736.
Wiederrecht, G. P., Bachelot, R., Xiong, H., Termentzidis, K., Nominé, Huang, J., Kamat, P.V., Rozhkova, E., Sumant, A., Ostraat, M., Jain, P.K., Heckle, C., Li, J. and Pupek, K.Z., Nanomaterials and Sustainability, ACS Energy Letters, 2023, 8(8), 3443-9.
Jie Li, Yung Liu, STARCCM+ Simulation of Temperature Fields in A HI-STORM100 Storage Cask, Proceedings of the 20^th International Symposium on the Packaging and Transportation of Radioactive Materials (PATRAM 22), June 11-15, 2023, Juan-les-Pins, France.
Li, J., Han, Z.H., Liu Y.Y. and Takeda H. Using Temperature and Flow Fields to Detect Gas Leakage from Canisters Containing Spent Nuclear Fuel: Applications to RAMM-TM, Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 412, 112449, 2023.
Tran, K.M, L. Rasmussen, E. Shevchenko, and J. Li High-throughput Screening of Vanadium (IV) Oxide via Continuous Hydrothermal Flow Synthesis Reactor, Material Chemistry, doi: 10.26434/chemrxiv-2021-kl74l, 2021.
Ren, H., Hassna, O., Li, J. and Arigong, B, A Patterned Phase-Changing Vanadium Dioxide Film Stacking with VO2 Nanoparticle Matrix for High-Performance Energy-Efficient Smart Window Applications. Applied Physics Letters, vol. 118, no. 5 February 1, 2021 doi: 10.1063/5.0038969.
Liu, Y., Craig, B. Han, Z.H., Li, J., Byrne, K., Takeda, H. and Saegusa, T. RAMM-TM for detection of gas leakage from canisters containing spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear Technology and Design, vol. 385, 11534, 2021.
Yan, X.J., Trevillyan, W., Castano, I., Sun, Y. G., Muehleisen, R. and J. Li. Continuous-Flow Synthesis of Thermochromic M-phase VO2 Particles via Rapid One-Step Hydrothermal Reaction – effect of Mixers. Journal of Nanomaterials, doi: 10.1155/2019/2570698. June 10, 2019.
TK J. Li and Y. Liu, Method for Fluidizing and Coating Ultrafine Particles, Device for Fluidizing and Coating Ultrafine Particles, US Patent 8,936,831, 2015.
J. Li, Y.G. Sun, R. T. Muehleisen, L. B. Guzowski, Xiaojie Yan, S. Dull, and I. Castano. Continuous Flow Synthesis of VO2 nanoparticles or Nano-rods Using a Micro-Reactor, US Patent 9,975,804, 2018.
TK Li, J. and Y.Y. Liu, Thermal Modeling of a Vertical Dry Storage Cask for Used Nuclear Fuel (using ANSYS/Fluent), Nuclear Engineering and Design, Vol. 301, 2016, p.74–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2016.01.008.
Li, J. and Y. Liu, Particle-Wave Duality and Coherent Control of Solid Dispersion in Dense Gas-Solid Flows. Chem. Eng. Sci., vol. 63, 732-750, 2008.
TK Li, J., Aranson, I. S., Kwok, W. K. and Tsimring, L.-S. Periodical and Disordered Structures in Modulated Gas-Driven Granular Layer, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 90, 134301, 2003.
Li, J. and Kuipers, J. A. M. On the Origin of Heterogeneous Flow Structures in Dense Gas-Solid flows. Chem. Eng. Sci., vol. 60, 1251-1265, 2005.