National Engineering Research Center of Lower-Carbon Catalysis Technology was established in 2021 at DICP, and approved by the National Development and Reform Commission. The founder and current director is Prof. Zhongmin Liu. The laboratory constitutes one of the research units in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics: the Low-carbon Catalysis and Engineering Department. The department comprises 8 labs and 1 office, and has 69 researchers including 1 Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering，15 professors and 46 associate professors. The research team has developed many new catalytic processes and technologies with independent intellectual property rights. Many of them have been commercialized. The methanol to olefins (DMTO) and methanol to ethanol (DMTE) technology are two representative realizations.

Prof. Zhongmin Liu, together with his team, successfully built the world's first industrial demonstration unit for converting methanol to olefins (with olefin capacity of 16 Kt/a). DMTO technology was first licensed to Shenhua Group. In August 2010, it started up the world's first commercial coal to olefins plant (600 Kt/a polyolefin) in Baotou, China, which was a milestone for coal to chemicals. So far, DMTO technology has been licensed in 34 commercial units with 23.20 Mt/a olefin, among which 17 licenses have started up commercial-scale MTO installations exceeding 10 Mt/a olefin. Due to his contributions in leading DMTO technology, Prof. Zhongmin Liu received top honor in 2014 National Technological Invention Awards of China.

DMTE technology has been successfully applied into practice and started up the world’s first 10 Kt/a coal to ethanol plant (Shaanxi Xinghua Group Co., Ltd.) in 2017. Up to now, 14 DMTE units have been licensed with the ethanol production capacity of 4.55 Mt/a.

Besides, many other catalytic processes developed by the research team, such as propylene to isopropanol and methanol to dimethyl ether, have also been put into practice in the domestic and overseas.

National Engineering Laboratory for Methanol to Olefinshas won State Innovatitve Talents Promoting Plan in Key Areas, the Outstanding Science and Technology Research Achievement Prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Science & Technology for Development Award by the Chinese Academy of Sciences for Coal-based Ethanol Research Team.