Meet the Team: Hanwha Solutions’ Kitaeg Jung

My name is Kitaeg Jung and I’m a principal research engineer overseeing chemical processes at Hanwha Solutions. I joined Hanwha 15 years ago in 2005.

I’m currently in charge of ECO-DEHCH development. I also conduct research on new products and processes here at the lab.

My focus is on developing sustainable production processes that can reduce waste and are more efficient. For instance, my team and I developed ways to reduce wastewater output down to 1/50th, or even 1/100th, of that of current production techniques.

We’re also working on ways to recover organic compounds from wastewater and looking into next-generation energy sources like fuel cells.

I’ve been interested in the environment since I was a child. So, it’s great to see people becoming more aware of environmental issues.

Now, I take my children out to nature parks and volunteer for clean-up activities to show them the importance of preserving the environment.

To be frank, there were concerns over the toxicity of traditional phthalate plasticizers in Korea and other developed nations. Alternatives needed to be found.

It took us about eight years of continuous research to develop ECO-DEHCH. Because existing plasticizers were showing high performance, people were asking questions such as, “Is there space for ECO-DEHCH in the market?” As development progressed, however, the market for environmentally sustainable products grew much faster than anyone had anticipated.

Our biggest challenge was keeping manufacturing costs down. We managed to reduce those costs by about 50% in the end. By then, we were all optimistic about successfully commercializing ECO-DEHCH.

During the research phase, one major issue we had was the short shelf life of our catalyst.

This was a dilemma because we were just about ready to put it on the market. I didn’t give up and began digging deeply into where things might have gone wrong. While I was doing this, I found a pattern in our past findings. By examining that pattern and making changes to the details we had overlooked, I was able to improve the catalyst’s shelf life significantly.

Being able to experiment and collaborate with my colleagues to solve a major problem was an exhilarating one that I’ll never forget.

Research always includes unwanted results. I’m able to work through those frustrations thanks to my faith in my colleagues. They were all so supportive and encouraging throughout the eight years we worked on ECO-DEHCH, so I never gave up and was able to see it through to completion.

I think there is one key, which is the “question mark” that we put on the end of everything that we do.

What I mean is that we never simply accepted satisfactory results and moved on. We kept asking questions and strived to get even better results. By doing this, we discovered a lot of unexpected issues that needed to be addressed.

One of my key beliefs is that every problem has a solution. We were able to make ECO-DEHCH a success by constantly questioning and searching for problems and their solutions.

As a researcher working on environmentally sustainable projects, it was a dream come true to receive such a prestigious award. I felt that it wasn’t just in recognition of our successful research, but also the growth and necessity of environmentally sustainable industries in Korea.

It was gratifying to see how excited everyone else was about the award, especially my colleagues and all the staff at the lab who trusted us to the very end.

The commercialization of ECO-DEHCH is important in several ways. The most important thing is that chemical companies now must think of environmental sustainability on top of product performance. Because of this, I believe Hanwha Solutions and ECO-DEHCH kicked off an environmentally sustainable transformation in the chemical industry.

In the future, I believe we’ll see regulations put into place that will require plastics manufacturers to dedicate a portion of their output to environmentally sustainable products.

Chemical companies are already required to meet environmentally sustainable product quotas. I expect that this practice will have a huge impact on how chemical companies implement sustainable policies.

We’ve begun researching biochemistry and biodegradable polymers, which are two environmentally sustainable areas that are getting a lot of attention in the chemical industry.

ECO-DEHCH was just the beginning for us. We’re going to keep improving our technical capabilities and commercial viability to make sure environmentally sustainable products are more widely used.

I’m driven by perseverance and passion to continue discovering problems that need solutions. As I said before, every problem has a solution. You may already have a solution, but it might not be the best one. There may be a better solution if you dig a little deeper.

Also, I think that the compulsion to keep looking for the best solutions is another spark that drives me.

Research isn’t something you do alone. ECO-DEHCH succeeded because of the amazing support I received from my colleagues and the company.

It was because I received this support that I was able to find the passion to complete this project.