Honghi Tran was born in Ninh Hoa, Khanh Hoa, Vietnam on April 20, 1951 and received his bachelors (1975) and masters (1977) degrees in engineering, both from the Shizuoka University, Japan. In 1982, he completed his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Tran increased the energy and chemical recovery efficiencies of the mills. His fully expanded sootblower nozzle design is now used in over 95% of the world’s recovery boilers. His other inventions include: Low pressure sootblowing steaming in use in many new recovery boilers; use of borate autocausting technology; Theory explaining the stabilization of burner operations in the kiln and Fundamental studies on the recovery boiler conversion chemistry.
As Frank Dottori Professor of pulp and paper engineering and director of the Pulp and Paper Centre at the University of Toronto, Tran has been an outstanding contributor to the pulp and paper industry. He has acted as a conduit between university research and industry needs; including 55 industrial partners and over 140 university-company partnerships, both national and international. Over 200 of his students (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral) have gone on to pursue careers in the industry. He also conducted a TAPPI Kraft Recovery Course that trained about 3,700 people mainly from paper industry and its suppliers.
Tran is the recipient of over 12 awards including the most prestigious ones like the TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal (the highest honor given by TAPPI); the John S. Bates Gold Medal (the highest award given by PAPTAC); and the Lifetime Achievements and Contributions Award from the International Chemical Recovery conference technical program committee.
Tran has published nearly 280 conference and journal articles including 19 technical papers of which 17 have been awarded “best conference papers”. He also holds 8 patents.
Tran resides with his wife Airan Tran in Toronto. They have two children: Daughter Angela Kingyens who lives in Palo Alto, CA, U.S.A and Son Christopher in Ottawa, Canada.
