Personal Statement
Professor Zhibin Yu currently holds the Chair of Energy Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Liverpool. He leads the Clean Energy and Power Research Cluster within the School of Engineering and holds a Royal Society Industrial Fellowship (2023–2027).

Prior to this, he held academic positions at the James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow: Lecturer (2012–2017), Senior Lecturer (2017–2019), and Professor of Thermal Energy (2019–2023). Before joining the University of Glasgow, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Leicester (2011–2012) and the University of Manchester (2006–2011).

He earned his BEng in Cryogenic and Refrigeration Engineering and Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China) and his PhD in Thermal Engineering from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Part of his PhD research was conducted at the Laboratoire d’Informatique pour la Mécanique et les Sciences de l’Ingénieur, CNRS, France. Professor Yu is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Member of the Institute of Refrigeration (IOR), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers in Scotland (IES), and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

His research focuses on developing innovative solutions for sustainable heating, cooling, and power generation, with expertise spanning heat pumps, refrigeration, energy storage, district heating and cooling networks, organic Rankine cycle systems, and thermoacoustics. Professor Yu has led or contributed to more than 38 research projects with a combined value exceeding £40 million FEC, funded by EPSRC, Innovate UK, Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, DESNZ, and the European Commission. He has published over 200 research papers (Google Scholar) and is the inventor of the Flexible Heat Pump Cycle (PCT reference: WO2022069581A1), a technology enabling the next generation of high-efficiency, flexible heat pumps.

He currently serves as Associate Editor for Applied Energy (Elsevier) and npj Thermal Science and Engineering (Springer Nature), Subject Editor for Applied Thermal Engineering (Elsevier), and Section Editor-in-Chief for Frontiers in Thermal Engineering. He is also a member of the editorial boards of Energy Reports (Elsevier) and the International Journal of Green Energy (Taylor & Francis). Professor Yu is a Board Director of the International Association for Green Energy and served as Chair of the 15th International Green Energy Conference, hosted at the University of Glasgow.

Research Overview
Professor Yu's research is focused on thermal energy technologies and their fundamental thermodynamic, heat transfer, fluid-dynamic problems. He is particularly interested in developing novel technologies for sustainable heating, cooling, and power generation, including but not limited to the topics as follows:

- Heat Pumps
- Refrigeration Systems
- Thermal Energy Storage
- District Heating & Cooling
- Organic Rankine Cycle
- Thermal Energy Digital Twins
- Machine Learning for Thermal Systems


Research grants:

Project Principal Investigator (Project PI)

[1] EPSRC (Critical Mass) “Sustainable Open-loop Large-scale Interseasonal Thermochemical Heat Storage (SOLIS)” (UKRI3935), £2.52M total value (£857k share), Aug 2026–Jan 2030.
[2] EPSRC “Demonstration of the Next Generation CO2 Heat Pump based on the Flexible Heat Pump Cycle (FlexiCO2-HP)” (UKRI3154), £663k total value (£404k share), Oct 2025–Sep 2027.
[3] The Royal Society (Industrial Fellowship) “Industrial Fellowship, Flexible Heat Pump Technology – from Concept to Applications” (IF\R1\231053), £180k total value (£180k share), Jan 2024–Dec 2027.
[4] EPSRC “An Adsorption-Compression Cold Thermal Energy Storage System (ACCESS)” (EP/W027593/1), £1.02M total value (£507k share), Jan 2023–Jan 2025.
[5] EPSRC “Flexible Air Source Heat pump for domestic heating decarbonisation (FASHION)” (EP/V042033/1), £1.15M total value (£733k share), Sep 2021–Aug 2024.
[6] EPSRC “Geothermally sourced combined power and freshwater generation for eastern Africa (Combi-Gen)” (EP/P028829/1), £1.34M total value (£969k share), Apr 2017–Jul 2021.
[7] EPSRC “Thermally Driven Heat Pump Based on an Integrated Thermodynamic Cycle for Low Carbon Domestic Heating (Therma-Pump)” (EP/N020472/1), £713k total value (£505k share), Oct 2016–Dec 2019.
[8] EPSRC “Dynamic Organic Rankine Cycle for Recovering Industrial Waste Heat” (EP/N005228/1), £98k total value (£98k share), Jan 2016–Dec 2016.
[9] ETP/SSE “Studentship: Reducing the performance gap of behind the meter renewables using digital twin technology”, £102k total value (£102k share), May 2023–Jun 2027.
[10] ETP/SPEN “Studentship: Mitigate the impacts of heat electrification on grid with flexible heating system”, £98k total value (£98k share), Oct 2022–Mar 2026.
[11] ETP/SPEN “Studentship: Modelling of 5th Generation District Heating Networks, PhD studentship” , £90k total value (£90k share), May 2021–Jun 2024.
[12] SPEN “PhD Studentship: Impact of electrification of heat on the grid”, £68k total value, Jan 2019–Sep 2023.
[13] ETP “Novel Heat Pump System for Electric Retrofitted Commercial Vehicles”, £9.3k total value, Apr 2002–Mar 2023.
[14] EPSRC IAA “Flexible heat pump”, £10k total value, Jan 2022–Jun 2023.
[15] OfGem (Strategic Innovation Fund) “Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF): Flexible Heat”, £24k total value, Feb 2022–Apr 2022.
[16] ETP/SPEN “Studentship: Modelling and Optimisation of Integrated Urban Energy Systems for both Heating and Power”, £90k total value, Feb 2018–Jan 2022.
[17] EPSRC IAA “Waste heat driven cooling system”, £40k total value, Oct 2020–Sep 2021.
[18] UKRI “COA Allocation”, £90k total value, Jan 2021–Sep 2021.
[19] British Council-NSFC “Researcher Links Workshop Grant 2018, China-UK workshop on low-carbon heating and cooling technologies” (2018-RLWK10-10298), £40k total value (£20k share), Jan 2019–Dec 2019.
[20] Royal Society “Study on the integrated vehicle IC engine-based ORC system” (IE150866), £12.5k total value, Mar 2016–Mar 2018.
[21] EPSRC IAA “Development of a Novel Expander Technology” (Via EP/K503903/1), £10k total value, Jan 2017–Mar 2017.
[22] Royal Society “Investigating zeotropic mixtures as working fluids for high efficiency Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plants” (RG130051), £14.7k total value, Nov 2013–Oct 2014.
[23] Chinese Academy of Sciences (Visiting Fellowship) “Visiting Fellowship – Thermoacoustic energy systems”, ¥130k total value, Sep 2004–Sep 2005.

Institution Principal Investigator / Project Co-Investigator

[24] EPSRC (Critical Mass Programme) “Granular Solid Particle Long Duration Energy Storage System (GPStore)” (UKRI3934), £2.52M total value (£361k share), Apr 2026–Apr 2029. (Role: UoL PI & WP2 Leader)
[25] EPSRC “Prosperity Partnership, Energy System Digital Twin (ESIGN)” (EP/X025322/1), £4.34M from EPSRC and £4M from SPEN (£985k share), Aug 2023–Aug 2027. (Role: UoL PI & WP3 Leader)
[26] EPSRC (Programme Grant) “Programme Grant: Decentralised water technologies” (EP/V030515/1), £5.99M total value (£606k share), Mar 2021–Dec 2026. (Role: UoL PI)
[27] Department of Energy Security and Net Zero “Heat Pump Ready Programme: The Flexible Heat Pump” , £773k total value (£187k share), Apr 2024–Mar 2025. (Role: UoL PI)
[28] EPSRC “GREEN-ICEs: Generation of REfrigerated ENergy Integrated with Cold Energy storage” (EP/T022701/1), £1.20M total value (£401k share), Sep 2020–Aug 2024. (Role: UoG PI)
[29] European Commission “Collaborative development of renewable/thermally driven and storage-integrated cooling technologies” (01007976), €892k total value (£64k share), Oct 2021–Sep 2026. (Role: UoL PI)
[30] Royal Academy of Engineering (Industrial Fellowship) “Industrial Fellowship: Smart and Integrated Energy Systems for Heat and Electricity” (IF2122\182), £84k total value, Sep 2021–Sep 2023. (Role: UoG Host)
[31] IUK/EPSRC “An ORC power plant integrated with thermal energy storage to utilise renewable heat sources for distributed heating and power” (EP/R003122/1), £2.00M total value (£390k share), May 2017–Apr 2019. (Role: UoG PI)
[32] OfGem (Strategic Innovation Fund) “Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF): Heat Balance”, £27k total value, Feb 2022–Apr 2022. (Role: Co-I)
[33] Royal Academy of Engineering “Point-of-use heat exchanger system for bio-filtration and storage of portable water”, £75k total value, Mar 2019–Ref 2022. (Role: Co-I)
[34] European Commission “Demonstration of soft stimulation treatments of geothermal reservoirs (DESTRESS)” (No 691728), €10.7M total value, (UoG share: £189K) Mar 2016–Feb 2020. (Role: Co-I)
[35] IUK “Developing and testing a new Energy from Waste Gasification Feedstock” (TS/P006914/19), £639k total value (UoG: £125k), 2017–2019. (Role: Co-I)
[36] EPSRC “Real time control of gasifiers to increase tolerance to biomass variety and reduce emissions” (EP/M01343X/1), £1.0M total value (UoG: £427K), Jan 2015–Dec 2017. (Role: Co-I)
[37] European Commission “Low-Carbon After-Life for Coal Mines (LoCAL) – Ground-Source Heat-Pumps”, £189k total value, Jul 2014–Jun 2017. (Role: Co-I)
[38] Royal Academy of Engineering “Innovative energy neutral membrane system for metallurgy wastewater treatment and heavy metal recovery” (NRCP/1415/55), £17.8k total value, Mar 2015–Nov 2016. (Role: Co-I)