On April 9, 2021, Shengbao He, secretary of the Party committee and president of the Research Institute of Petrochemical Industry of PetroChina, Jianjun Yi, chief expert of the Institute, and Yang Li, director of the Center for Foreign Exchange and Cooperation of the Institute visited Nankai University. Prof. Qilin Zhou, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Chunming Cui, director of the State Key Laboratory of Elemental Organic Chemistry met with the guests. The two sides held a cooperation negotiation conference in the Liujiao Building of Balitai campus. Some key academic staff from the College of Chemistry and State Key Laboratory participated in this meeting.

During the talks, the two sides first introduced their respective units and put forward preliminary ideas on their cooperation intention. Academician Qilin Zhou said that the Institute and the Key Laboratory both had their own advantages and characteristics and he hoped that the two sides could establish a close cooperative relationship based on demand through exchanges and communication. Chunming Cui expressed the hope that the two sides can speed up the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements through technical cooperation and talent exchange in the future. President He said that the two sides had broad prospects for cooperation and hoped to explore the possibility of further cooperation through this negotiation, so as to promote the common development of both sides. After that, experts from both sides had technical exchanges and had deeply discussions on relevant technical issues.

After the talks, Prof. Cui accompanied the guests to resume the inspection tour of Nankai University by General Secretary Xi Jinping.

Established in June 2006, Research Institute of Petrochemical Industry of PetroChina is the only research institute directly under PetroChina refining and chemical industry. The Institute is the decision-making staff department of PetroChina refining and chemical business, high-tech R&D center, decision support and production technology service center and high-level scientific and technological personnel training center. It is mainly engaged in the research and development of refining and chemical catalysts and processes, the development of new products such as synthetic resin and synthetic rubber, the development of cleaner production technology, product standardization and quality testing, intellectual property rights and decision support, etc. At present, the R&D of a full range of refining catalysts and key chemical catalysts has achieved successfully and the clean production technology has made much breakthroughs. The independent technology covers 80% of the refining process and 50% of the chemical process. More than 100 new chemical products with high added value have been developed, which effectively supports the transformation and upgrading and high-quality development of PetroChina's refining and chemical industry.