Dr. Fan received his BEng (Environmental Engineering) and MRes (Chemical Engineering) in China. In 2006, he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath, UK, as a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Alexei A. Lapkin. His PhD projects focused on designing structured multifunctional reactors, formulating novel carbon-based metal catalysts for continuous-flow heterogeneous catalysis and developing flow chemistry with microreactors. After his PhD, from May 2010 to September 2013, Xiaolei worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick and then at the University of Cambridge. During this period, He was contracted by EC FP7 projects to develop nanomaterial-based catalysts (e.g. bi-metallic catalysts supported on monoliths coated with nanocarbons) and perform multi-scale modeling (CFD + kinetic modeling) of catalytic multiphase flows in structured reactors.

    In October 2013, he joined the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at The University of Manchester as a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering. He has a research group with 6 PhD students and one PDRA with research projects focusing on (i) porous materials for gas separation and catalysis, (ii) hierarchical structures based on macroscopic cellular materials for continuous-flow catalysis, (iii) non-conventional activation of catalysts and (iv) simulation of reacting flows in porous media.

Research interests

    interdisciplinary chemical engineer with general research interests in catalysis, porous materials, chemical reaction engineering and structured reactors/catalysts. Current research projects in my group include (i) framework materials (e.g. metal-organic frameworks, MOFs, zeolites) for gas seperation and catalysis, (ii) hierarchical catalytic structures based on open-cell SiC foams for catalysis, (iii) non-thermal activation of catalytic system using microwave and plasma, and (iv) numerial study of multiphase phenomena in porous media.