Our discipline is closely integrated with the other preponderant disciplines in our university, such as metallurgical engineering, environmental engineering, and materials engineering disciplines, which helps to promote the cross-development of all the concerned disciplines.

In addition, our discipline is also closely related to the characteristics of regional resources and industrial status, and follows the industry-university-research cooperation model, further forms three stable discipline-featured directions for engineering applications: (1) Metallurgical and chemical processes. This direction focuses on the technology development and application research in high-efficiency conversion of low-rank coal, rocess optimization, equipment improvement, the value-added utilization of product and the coupling of ndustrial chains, etc. (2) Environmental catalysis. This direction focuses on the development and application of novel high-efficiency electrodes, photocatalysts and corelated industrializable devices. (3) Applied chemistry of functional materials. Teachers in this direction have been engaging in the preparation, modification, processing and application of new functional materials.

Many provincial and ministerial scientific research platforms have been established led by our discipline, including the Innovation Strategic Alliance of Blue-coke Industrial Technology, the Shaanxi Province International Cooperation Base of Clean Chemical-Metallurgical Process, the Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials & Technology and the Shaanxi Province Engineering Research Center f Functional Materials Process, etc. Moreover, teachers in our discipline participated in the Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Membrane Separation, the Shaanxi Province Engineering and Technology Research Center of Sewage Treatment & Resource Utilization, etc. In recent five years, teachers in our discipline have published more than 300 research literatures in high-quality international journals, including Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, Chemical Engineering Journal, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Water Research, Journal of Catalysis, Journal of Membrane Science, Electrochimica Acta, Carbohydrate Polymers, Fuel, Energy & Fuels, Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, etc., which aroused considerable attention in environmental catalysis, energy and chemical engineering field. We have been focusing on the college-enterprise cooperation model of "Industry,University, Research and Application". The large-scale production technology and equipments of blue-coke, cooperatively developed with Shaanxi Shenmu Sanjiang Coal Chemical Industry Co. Ltd, have been widely used in Shaanxi, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Gansu and other provinces in China. We also enacted three national standards of blue-coke industry, which has made great contributions for the rapid development of blue-coke in China. Our faculty participated in the shareholding of the Shaanxi Province Research Institute Co., Ltd of Membrane Separation Technology with a lot of patented technologies, which incubated 9 companies by a variety of new models. The developed hollow PVDF fiber membrane with high anti-pollution performance and the corresponding technology and equipments of water treatment were widely used in feedwater treatment, sewage treatment, food science, biological treatment and other main fields. In addition, we boost Xi’an Jinzang Membrane Technology Co., Ltd. and Lenghu Jinzang Membrane Technology Co., Ltd. investing the first-stage production line of lithium carbonate for batteries, which possess the production capacity of 3,000 tons/per-year and has attracted much attention from the industry and scientific field.