Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search
Biography Xudong Zhao is a globally recognised energy researcher whose focus is around sustainable building services, renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. Over his 30 year career he has led or participated in 58 research projects worth £18.5m, 40 engineering consultancy projects worth £5m and claimed 11 patents.

- 58 research projects with a total fund value in excess of £18.5 million

- 213 scientific papers

- 11 patents

- 7 books published (as a co-author)

- 25 postdoctoral research fellows and 30 PhD students have been (is being) supervised

- 40 engineering design and construction projects completed

- 1 MSc programme developed

- 8 teaching modules undertaken
Research Interests -Renewable/Sustainable Energy Technologies & Systems , including solar thermal/power system, ambient and ground source energy utilizations, among others.

-Energy efficient technologies& Systems, including CHP, heat pipe, heat pump and PCM among others.

-Energy in Built Environment, including services engineering, environmental technology and energy systems.

Working with numerous institutes on the collaborative EU, UK and China Project

- University of Nottingham
- University of Sheffield
- University College London
- Brunel University
- South Bank University
- Bath University
- De Montfort University
- University of Leeds
- Strathclyde University
- Heriot-Watt University
- Northumbria University
- Queens Mary University of London
- University of Reading
- University of Edinburgh
- Munters UK Ltd
- Ebm-pepst UK Ltd
- Thermacore Europe
- IT Power
- NPS Humber Ltd
- Arup
- Bill Dunster architects - ZEDfactory Ltd
- Hurleypalmerflat
- Vale Window Company Ltd
- Nuaire Ltd
- Bobby Gilbert & Associates Ltd
- PICK EVERARD
- Sustainable Energy Installations Ltd
- Renewable Energy Supplier Ltd
- EPS Ltd
- SKYLINE CG
- Nuaire Ltd
- Vale Window
- Dragodas, Spain
- Munters Europe, Sweden
- Nobatek, France
- Valliant, Turkey
- Ascamm, Spain
- Inea, Czech Republic
- Va-Q-tec AG, Germany
- UPM, Spain
- UMINHO, Portugal
- VTT, Finland
- IIT, Israel
- MGEP, Spain
- NUC, Norway
- TUDA, Germany
- CNRS, France
- Onyxsolar, Spain
- Apintech, Greece
- Tensoforma, Italy
- Acciona, Spain
- Tecnalia, Spain
- D’appolonia SPA, Italy
- AUTH, Greece
- European Alumium Association, Belgium
- CARTIF, Spain
- Elval, Greece
- Fenix TNT SRO, Czech Republic
- UBU, Spain
- Fasada, Poland
- PICH-Aguil, Spain
- Tsinghua University, China
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
- University of Science and Technology of China
- Harbin Institute of Technology, China
- Tongji University, China
- Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, China
- Guangdong University of Technology, China
- Taiyuan University of Technology, China
- Shanghai Pacific Energy Centre, China
- Gree Ltd, China
- Sinogreen Ltd, China
- Youshida Ltd, China
- Aolan Ltd, China
Teaching and Learning 16971_16/17S2 Renewable Energy Technologies for Buildings

57020 Fluid dynamics - lab experiment reporting marking

57182_16/17S1 Built Environment Technologies

K11SD2 Building Services Design 2

K1AES2 Environmental Services Design 2

K14RMS Research Methodology

06061 Preparing for Learning in HE - teacher

Engineering FdEng Projects

Engineering Group Projects

Engineering Undergraduate Projects

Taught MSc Individual Projects.
Scopus Author ID 55705196100
PhD Supervision Availability Yes
PhD Topics Over more than 30 years of professional career, he has led or participated in 58 research projects funded by EU, EPSRC, Royal Society, Innovate-UK, Royal Academy of Engineering, China Ministry of Science and Technology and industry with accumulated fund value of approximately £18.5 million, 40 engineering consultancy projects worth £5 million, and claimed 11 patents. Up to date, he has supervised 30 PhD students and 25 postdoctoral research fellows, published 213 peer-reviewed papers in high impact journals and referred conferences, involved authorization of 8 books, chaired, organized and gave keynote (invited) speeches in 30 international conferences. His researches in solar PV, solar thermal, solar PV/T (photovoltaic/thermal), heat pump, and sustainable heating & cooling have achieved world-leading standards, being placed at the ‘2017 world highly cited researchers list’, receiving the ‘The UK Rushlight Innovation Award’, ‘European Dragon-STAR Innovation Silver Award (2nd place)’, ‘World Society of Sustainable Energy Technology 1st, 2th and 3th Round Innovation Awards’ in consecutive years of 2016, 2017 and 2018, and being nominated as a candidate for ‘2018 World Eni-awards’. He is currently undertaking a number of important national and international roles: (1) Member of the UK ‘EPSRC Engineering Prioritisation Panel’; (2) Executive Board Member of the ‘World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies’; (3) Executive Management Board Member of the ‘International Conference Series for Sustainable Energy Technologies’; (4) Steering Committee Member of the ‘European District Heating and Cooling Technology Platform’ involving development of work documents for European Commission in this subject (e.g. Digital District Heating and Cooling etc); (5) Editorial board member of the journals ‘Energy’, ‘Renewable Energy’, ‘Energies’, ‘Future Cities and Environment’, ‘Frontiers in Built Environment and Mechanical Engineering’, ‘Heat Exchangers’, ‘Sustainable Cities and Society’, ‘Journal of Architectural Research and Development (JARD)’, ‘Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning’ and ‘Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering’; (6) Guest Lead Editors for the ‘Applied Energy’, ‘International Journal of Photo-energy’, ‘Energies’, and ‘Frontier of Energy Researches’; (7) The referee for EU FP7 programme, colleague member of EPSRC (UK), referee of ESRC (UK), French National Agency (ANR), Kazakhstan National Science and Technology Ministry, Portugal Science and Technology section and Hong Kong Research Grant Council; and (8) UK Newton Fund Programme Advisor focusing on China related research collaboration. Recently, he was selected as the member of the ‘EU Academy of Sciences’, and won the sole ‘Research Excellence Award’ from the University of Hull.

Completed PhD's

1. Bing Wang (Second Supervisor) – Composite fibre materials, completed in 2016, Hull
2. Yang Qin (Second Supervisor) – Composite material characterization, completed in 2018, Hull.
3. Jinzhi Zhou (First Supervisor) – Investigation of a novel PV-micro-channel-evaporator based heating system, completed in 2018, Hull
4. Jinchun Shen (First Supervisor) – Investigation of a novel heat pipe incorporating solar façade system, completed in 2015, Hull
5. Xingxing Zhang (First Supervisor) – A novel zero (low) carbon, building integrated solar/air PV/c-l-h-p heat pump system, completed in 2014, Hull
6. Peng Xu (First Supervisor) – A super-performance dew point air cooler and its application in buildings, completed in 2018, Hull
7. Zishang Zhu (First Supervisor) – Optimisation study of the eco-building design in China, completed in 2017, Hull
8. Chrsitine Ballard (First Supervisor) – Investigation into the best practice for building energy and sustainability, completed in 2009, Nottingham
9. Andreas Engelhardt (First Supervisor) – Effect of shape-changing on the performance and operating characteristics of heat pipes, completed in 2009, Nottingham
10. Zhiyin Duan (First Supervisor) – Investigation of a novel dew point cooling technology for EU building air conditioning, completed in 2011, Nottingham
11. Zhangyuan Wang (First Supervisor) – Investigation of a novel façade-based solar loop heat pipe water heating system, completed in 2011, Nottingham
12. Shuli Liu (Second Supervisor) – A novel heat recovery/desiccant cooling system, completed in 2008, Nottingham
13. Musa Muazo (Second Supervisor) – Novel evaporation cooling systems for building applications, completed in 2008, Nottingham
14. Ferdinard Daminabo (Second Supervisor) – A novel bio-mass driven micro-CHP system, completed in 2009, Nottingham
15. Matiwaza Ncube (Second Supervisor) – Development of a methodology for rapid assessment of indoor environment quality (IEQ) using measured or design data, and energy use, completed in 2010, Nottingham
16. Nick Beckett (Second Supervisor) – Investigation of control strategies of a novel domestic renewable energy storage system, completed in 2010, Nottingham
17. Yanqi Cui (Second Supervisor) – PCM technology for buildings, completed in 2014, Nottingham.
18. Mahamood Mustfa (Second Supervisor) – Ecological air conditioning system using dew point cooling and desiccant dehumidification – Middle East case study, completed in 2016, De Montfort
19. Xia Hua (First Supervisor) – Investigation of photo-catalyst building construction materials for enviroment remediation and self cleaning, completed in 2015, De Montfort
20. Samira Mustafa (Second Supervisor) – BIPV cooling technology and its application in buildings, completed in 2017, De Montfort
21. Gang Ren (First Supervisor) – Energy system planning and performance study of a near-to-zero carbon island in sub-tropical climate region, thesis submitted, Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Current PhD supervisions

• Min Yu, PhD student (CSC scholarship). Investigation of a novel solar PV/Micro-Channel-Loop-Heat-Pipe (PV/MCLHP) heat and power system. X. Zhao (First Supervisor), P. Rubini (Second supervisor). Commencing at Sep. 2016
• Yi Fan, PhD student (University fee-waive and industrial Scholarship). A hybrid solar/ground sourced heat and power system for buildings. X. Zhao (First Supervisor), P. Rubini (Second supervisor). Commencing at Sep. 2016
• Yousef Golizadeh Akhlaghi, PhD student. Development of the design and optimisation tool for a novel data-centre based dew point air conditioning system. X. Zhao (First Supervisor), X. Ma (Second supervisor). Commencing at Sept. 2017
• Samson Shittu, PhD student. Optimum control strategy for a novel data-centre based dew point air conditioning system. X. Zhao (First Supervisor), X. Ma (Second supervisor). Commencing at Sept. 2017
• Yu Cui, PhD student. Study of a novel integrated, cloud-computing based district-scale energy and environment management system. X. Zhao (First Supervisor). Commencing at Sept. 2018
• Peng Qin, PhD student. An intelligent energy management system for city and district. Z. Zhu (First Supervisor), X. Zhao (Second Supervisor). Commencing at Jan. 2019
• Mohammed Alsaleem, PhD student. A novel data centre cooling system using a novel micro-channel loop heat pipe system. X. Ma (First supervisor), X. Zhao (Second Supervisor). Commencing at Jan. 2019.