About Longzihu New Energy Laboratory

Longzihu New Energy Laboratory

The Longzihu New Energy Laboratory is a Henan provincial laboratory for new-energy science, headquartered at Longzihu — Longzi Lake — in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, with its own official site at lnelab.ac.cn. It is jointly built by Henan University and the Zhengzhou Zhongke Emerging Industry Technology Research Institute, and its unveiling ceremony was held on 22 September 2022 at the Henan Provincial Party Committee, with official registration following on 20 December. The laboratory's director is academician Zhang Suojiang. Described on its official introduction page as a reserve team for the national laboratory system, it carries out strategic, pioneering and forward-looking research aimed at building an innovation chain of "production–storage–use" across wind power, photovoltaics, biomass energy, hydrogen energy storage, low-carbon industrial energy and multi-energy complementary intelligent systems.

Origins: the third batch of Henan's provincial laboratories

The laboratory belongs to the third batch of Henan provincial laboratories, part of the rapid reconstruction of the province's laboratory system that began with the Songshan Laboratory in July 2021 and reached twenty unveiled provincial laboratories by early 2024. At the unveiling ceremony on 22 September 2022, Provincial Party Secretary Lou Yangsheng attended and delivered a speech, Provincial Governor Wang Kai attended, and academician Zhang Suojiang, the laboratory's director, introduced its overall situation and development concept. Lou Yangsheng pointed to the need to build an innovation system deeply integrating industry, academia, research and application, and to empower modern industrial clusters through collaborative innovation. The laboratory's own site presents its establishment as a major measure by Henan Province to implement its strategy of innovation-driven development, revitalising the province through science and education, and strengthening it through talent.

The builders: Henan University and the Zhengzhou emerging-industry institute

Longzihu is jointly built by Henan University and the Zhengzhou Zhongke Emerging Industry Technology Research Institute (the Zhengzhou Institute of Emerging Industrial Technology). Henan University, based in Kaifeng with a Zhengzhou campus on the Longzi Lake education hub, took the lead role; the laboratory is closely bound to the university, and its site carries Henan University's own related ventures, such as the unveiling of the university's Carbon Neutrality Research Institute in February 2023, at which Zhang Suojiang — also president of Henan University — set out the carbon-neutrality strategy the laboratory serves. The pairing of a comprehensive university with an emerging-industry technology institute reflects the laboratory's design: fundamental energy science on one side, and an institution oriented to industrial technology on the other, in a province determined to convert research into industrial clusters.

Director: Academician Zhang Suojiang

The laboratory's director, Zhang Suojiang, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the CAS Institute of Process Engineering, and president of Henan University. His science is green chemical process and engineering, centred on ionic liquids: his official laboratory biography records that he revealed the structure–activity relationships of green-medium ionic liquids and the special structures of nano-micro interfaces, forming new methods for the molecular design of ionic liquids; obtained new mechanisms for reaction–transfer coupling in ionic-liquid systems and the engineering laws for scaling them up; and overcame major challenges in the large-scale preparation, process innovation and system integration of ionic liquids, achieving demonstration and industrial application of multiple green technologies. In November 2022 — announced at the 16th TWAS Academic Conference in Hangzhou on 21 November — he won the Chemistry Prize of TWAS, the Academy of Sciences of Developing Countries, in recognition of his contributions to basic research and green technology development in ionic liquids and chemical engineering. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Process Engineering and of Green Energy & Environment. A director whose personal field is the green chemistry of energy processes gives the laboratory a defined scientific accent within its broad energy remit.

Position in the national strategy

The laboratory's official introduction frames its mission against national strategy: it focuses on the national energy strategy and the "dual carbon" major strategy — China's goals of peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality — and carries out strategic, pioneering and forward-looking major transformative technology and common basic research. Within Henan, it is positioned as an important support for building a national innovation highland and for connecting the province with the national strategic scientific and technological force system; provincial laboratories in Henan are formally described in the province's 2021 laboratory construction management measures as the reserve team of the national laboratories and the vanguard of the province's innovation bases, charged with gathering high-level talent, tackling key core technologies, sharing research facilities and transforming scientific achievements. Longzihu's stated ambition matches that charter: to build a domestically leading and internationally first-class new energy innovation highland and research and development centre, leading the development of the new-energy industry and supporting the transformation toward a low-carbon industry and intelligent society.

Three centres, six directions, one chain

The laboratory's research is organised into three major centres: the Renewable Energy Center, the Hydrogen Energy Storage Center (Energy Storage Hydrogen Energy Center), and the Low Carbon Industrial System Center. Across those centres it pursues six main directions and aims to create a "production–storage–use" innovation chain spanning wind and solar power, biomass energy, hydrogen energy storage, low-carbon industrial energy consumption, and multi-energy complementary smart systems. The logic of the chain is system-level rather than device-level: generation from renewables, storage — with hydrogen prominent — and use, including the decarbonisation of industrial energy demand and the intelligent coordination of multiple energy sources, are treated as one linked problem. That matches the laboratory's academic-committee reporting, where the overall goal is stated as developing new theories and methods for energy transformation, achieving breakthroughs and application demonstrations of original and key technologies, and building a top domestic, internationally leading low-carbon energy innovation highland and R&D centre.

People and research system

The laboratory reports a dedicated research team of over 100 people, led by academicians and outstanding younger researchers ("excellent youth" talent), and a research system and mechanism described as "task oriented, collaborative research, open sharing, and dynamic adjustment". Its governance includes an academic committee whose first meeting brought together eleven academicians and experts from universities, research institutes and enterprises; the meeting was presided over by the committee's chairman, academician Han Buying, heard executive deputy director Zhang Yanqiang report the overall construction plan, and heard deputy director Nie Yi report the deployment of the laboratory's joint fund, including its focus on cutting-edge projects, selection principles and cooperation methods. The committee unanimously endorsed the laboratory's construction plan, research development plan and project deployment — an early external check on a young institution's direction.

Partnerships and activity

The laboratory's news record shows it building the partnerships its integrated model requires. It has signed a cooperation agreement with the Ganjiang Innovation Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a cooperation agreement with the people's government of Xiangcheng County — one link into the national academy system, another into county-level government where energy projects are actually sited. Provincial leadership attention has continued after the unveiling: in February 2025, Provincial Party Secretary Liu Ning visited the laboratory to extend condolences and appreciation to academician Zhang Suojiang and to inspect its technological innovation work. Such visits are a standard marker in China of a platform's standing within its provincial system.

Research output in the indexes

The laboratory has established a visible publication record under its own name. The Nature Index maintains a full institutional profile for the Longzihu New Energy Laboratory, recording, for the twelve months from March 2025 to February 2026, an output of 16 counted articles with a Share of 2.52, led by applied sciences and chemistry among its subject areas. Its top domestic collaborator in that window was the Chinese Academy of Sciences, followed by Henan Normal University and the State Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Synthesis and Conversion Technology, with Luleå University of Technology among its international collaborators. For a laboratory registered only in late 2022, an indexed profile of that kind — with its director's institute, the CAS, as the leading partner — indicates that its teams are publishing in the selective journals the index tracks, in the energy and green-chemistry fields at the centre of its remit.

Place in Henan's laboratory system

Longzihu was the new-energy entry in a provincial system built at unusual speed — twenty laboratories in under three years, each batch unveiled with the province's senior leadership present, and each laboratory expected, in the words of provincial science officials, to look forward thirty years and integrate the province's advantageous industries and innovation resources. Within that system, Longzihu carries the energy brief for a province whose heavy industry, coal heritage and large population make the energy transition both urgent and difficult. Its third-batch peers and the batches that followed filled out fields from materials to biomedicine; the energy transition, however, touches every other field's operating conditions, which gives this laboratory a cross-cutting importance beyond its own publication record.

Why the laboratory matters

The Longzihu New Energy Laboratory concentrates Henan's new-energy ambitions in a single, formally constituted institution: jointly built by a major university and an industrial-technology institute, directed by one of China's leading green-chemistry academicians, organised into renewable-energy, hydrogen-storage and low-carbon-industry centres, and aimed explicitly at the national dual-carbon strategy. Its official record — unveiling, registration, academic-committee scrutiny, provincial leadership inspection, inter-institute agreements and an indexed publication output — shows a laboratory that has moved from announcement into operation. Whether it achieves its stated goal of an internationally first-class new-energy innovation highland will be decided by the technologies its production–storage–use chain delivers to Henan's industries and grid; the institutional foundations for that attempt are demonstrably in place.