Around 563 academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering voted and identified in Beijing the Top 10 Chinese scientific achievements of 2009 on January 20, 2010. This selection was based on their influence on human civilization.

   Industrial million-ton coal-to-glycol technology completed in China

It is the world's first model project of the industrial million-ton coal-to-glycol. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have developed for the first time in the world a technology, which can produce glycol ten thousand tons at a time. The technology can synthesize oxalate through catalysis phase of CO gas and then synthesize glycol by catalytic hydrogenation of oxalate, according to the researchers at Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter (FIRSM), CAS.