University of Groningen
Catalytic hydrotreatment of pyrolysis liquids and fractions Yin, Wang
IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below.
Document Version
Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record
Publication date: 2017
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Yin, W. (2017). Catalytic hydrotreatment of pyrolysis liquids and fractions: Catalyst Development and Process Studies. University of Groningen.
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).
Take-down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.
264
Acknowledgments
Time flies... My PhD study at the University of Groningen comes to an end.
When recalling the memories when I arrived in Groningen, I still remember the person who guided me to the international service desk of our university, I indeed didn’t know anything about this city at that time. I even didn’t know anything about living as a PhD student here. After more than five years in Groningen, I know a lot more, not only about research but also about living abroad. I would like to express my thanks to many persons who have ever helped me in the last five years.
First of all, I would to express my gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Hero Jan Heeres, it is him who offered me the PhD position in his group and gave me a lot of inspiration in the research. I still remember the first time we met in Beijing, we had a face to face interview in the Lidu hotel, Beijing. For me, it was really a challenge to have an interview with a Dutch person in English, because English was indeed a big problem for me. After around two hours talking, Erik directly told me that he would accept me as a PhD student in his group. Erik, thank you for your kindness to offer me the PhD position. Then I joined his group, a new lifestyle started in the Netherlands instead of China. During the research for my PhD, he gave me freedom to do anything I wanted, never told me I should do it, I can’t do it, just try, try, try...if you want to. After four years study as a PhD, Erik offered me a postdoc. position in Catchbio. Here I felt ashamed that I didn’t get any publication for this project because I didn’t manage the time quite well. I needed to continue the experiments for my PhD project, I needed to write the thesis chapters, I needed to do additional experiments for the revision of the papers... Anyway, I didn’t balance the time quite well, some new results came out but not sufficient for a nice publication due to the limited time for me. About thesis writing, I should say that Erik indeed is a serious man. When I send a new manuscript to him, he read it and gave numerous comments. I corrected it, sent back to him. Again, numerous comments came out. Corrected, comments, corrected, comments... To complete a paper, he will read and correct it for at least 20 times. Erik, thanks for your serious and patience about the writing. In life, Erik is a person really easy going. I remember that he visited my university in Tianjin, we sat together drinking Tsingtao beer. Anyway, thanks for all your help in the last more than five years, I hope to meet you in the Netherlands or China again.
265
I also gratefully acknowledge Dr. Robbie Venderbosch, a tall thin Dutch man with an seldom mentioned middle name Hendrikus and a strong accent I don’t know from where (haha...). As my co-supervisor, thanks for your broad knowledge and help with my PhD work and short postdoc. project. When I started my PhD, it was really difficult to follow you for a student with poor English from China. But I’m really impressed by your nose-GC, you smell every sample then give your ideas, an interesting thing is that the conclusions are always correct. It is you who taught me a lot about my PhD project, everytime when I met you, you told me something new, everytime when I had questions, you always gave me the answers, everytime when I had a massive amount of data with me, you always found the right way to approach it. I’m always thinking: he knows a lot about our research. I feel very happy that we could collaborate the last five years and a half. It is also a pity for me that I cannot work with you anymore in future. Thanks for all your help, both with the research work and the writing in the last 5.5 years.
I am thankful to my supervisor Prof. Shuqian Xia from Tianjin University, China. You inspired me to start research about biomass conversions, although the research topic during my master in your group was completely different from my PhD work. It is you who encouraged me to apply for the PhD abroad and the good news is that I now can say that I succeeded! During the last eight years, I could always get help when I experienced difficulties in study and life and you were always willing to listen to me about my research. Thanks for all your help and encouragement.
I also want to thank all my lab mates. Dr. Arjan Kloekhorst, who showed me to use the equipment in our group and willing to offer help during my last year stay in Groningen. You are a good man with enough patience to show me everything I asked for. Ria Abdilla, who helped me a lot about characterization of sugar fractions from pyrolysis liquids, you are an expert about sugar analysis. I really enjoyed the time we worked together and thank you and your husband Martijn Santes for your invitation for dinner. All the best for your PhD study! Monique Bernardes, who helped me with 2D-GC and NMR measurements. You are a good office and lab mate. Wish you good luck with your PhD study in Groningen. Shilpa Agarwal, Ramesh Kumar Chowdari, Idoia Hita, thanks for your help in the high pressure lab.
I’m grateful to those who have ever helped me with my research work and paper writing. Hans Heeres from the Biomass Technology Group (the Netherlands), Maria Bykova from the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis (Russia) and Prof. F. Frusteri from
266
CNR-ITAE (Italy). Without all your nice input in the papers, I would not have been to finish my PhD study in Groningen.
Also many thanks to the staff members of the chemical engineering department, Marya de Jonge, Erwin Wilbers, Marcel de Vries and Anne Appeldoorn for administrative and technical support, Leon Rohrbach, Jan Henk Marsman for analytic support, Hans van der Velde for performing the elemental analyses and G. O. R. Alberda van Ekenstein for the TGA analysis.
Special thanks to Zheng Zhang, Yuehu Wang, Zhenchen Tang, Yifei Fan, Xiaoying Xi, Yehan Tao, Li He, Feng Yu and Chunai Dai. Thanks for the time we stayed together to play Majiang, outings, hot pot, etc. Thanks also to Agnes Ardiyanti, C. B. Rasendra, Louis Daniel, Jenny Soetedjo, Muhammad Yusuf Abduh, Boy Arief Fachi, Angela Kumalaputri, Susanti, Miftahul Iimi and M. Iqbal.
I also would like to thank Prof. A. A. Broekhuis, Prof. dr. F. Picchioni, Prof.dr. Katalin Barta, Dr. Jun Yue, Dr. Paolo Pescarmona, Henk van de Bovenkamp, Dr. P. J. Deuss, Andrew Phua, Teddy Buntara, Diego A. Z. Wever, Maria J. Ortiz Iniesta, Radjeesh Pazhavelikkakath, Joost Winkelman, Tim Meinds, A. Hommes, Anna Piskun, Frank van Maastricht, Patrizio Raffa, Valeriya Zarubina, Cynthia Herder, Jan Willem Miel, Giovanni Bottari, Krzysztof K. Krawzcyk for all the help and support.
Last but not least, the most sincere gratitude goes to my family. I thank my parents, my brother and sister in law for their endless support during my ups and downs during the years abroad.
Finally, I would like to thank my good friends in China for the time we stayed together: Meijian Yang, Desheng Li, Shuangfei Zhou, Bing Ren, Xiaolei Ren and Zhonghai Du.
Sincerely yours, Wang Yin
