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Chemical, dyeing, and pharmaceutical industries are national pillar industries, while resulting in heavy pollution. In recent decades, the rapid development of these industries pose great pressure to local ecological environment, public health, and social stability. This has become a major problem that limits the sustainable development of local economy.
To promote the sustainable development of industries, Academician Quanxing Zhang from Nanjing University initiated the foundation of National Engineering Research Center for Organic Pollution Control and Resource Reuse (NERC) in 2009, which was officially authorized by Ministry of Science and Technology in 2013.
The goals of NERC are to develop technologies and equipment on clean production of chemical industry, organic pollutant control and reuse, environmental function material development, and risk assessment and control of organic pollutants. NERC has built the headquarter of 7200 m2, co-established 9 public platforms with local governments, including technology development platform, analysis and monitoring platform, equipment development platform, policy and standard research platform, technology transformation platform, industry incubation platform, international cooperation platform, information service platform, and talent cultivation platform. NERC also supported the construction of 7 industry-institute-university cooperating bases, and over 10 technology transformation enterprises, forming a technology innovation chain for organic pollution control and resource reuse.
By agglomerating resources from universities, governments and industries, NERC has obtained plentiful achievements, including 2 National Technology Invention Awards, 3 National Science and Technology Progress Awards, 1 National Science Award, 1 Ho Leung Ho Lee Science and Technology Innovation Award, 1 National Leading Innovation Award, and 19 first prize of provincial science and technology awards. NERC has made important contributions to the pollution control for Chinese lakes and rivers and the sustainable development of regional society and economy. During the evaluation of national engineering research centers organized by Ministry of Science and Technology in 2016, NERC ranked at the head.
