Domain-Specific Fine-tuning of Large Language Models and Intelligent Question-Answering System for Industrial Catalysis

Industrial catalysis, as a core field of chemical engineering, is characterized by intensive professional terminology and complex knowledge structures, making it challenging for general-purpose large language models to accurately understand and apply relevant professional knowledge. This research presents a domain-specific fine-tuning technique and retrieval-augmented generation system for the industrial catalysis field. Through a multi-model collaborative data processing pipeline, we construct high-quality training corpora, employ parameter-efficient fine-tuning techniques to train specialized domain models, and design a retrieval-augmented generation workflow based on consistency verification. The research first establishes a training corpus containing 2.3 billion tokens, including 1.1 billion domain-specific tokens and 1.2 billion general tokens with a balanced 1:1 ratio strategy. Subsequently, we apply rank-stabilized low-rank adaptation (rsLoRA) method to perform parameter-efficient fine-tuning on the Yi-1.5-6B model, resulting in the PeiYang Micro-Emergence model, which achieves a score of 76.81 in industrial catalysis field evaluation, significantly outperforming the general-purpose model Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct (65.45 points) with 12 times the parameters, while maintaining good general capabilities. We further construct a 3.37 million domain-specific retrieval pair dataset and optimize the embedding model using Matryoshka representation learning (MRL) techniques, achieving an average improvement of 2.87 percentage points in domain retrieval recall@3 while slightly enhancing general capabilities. Finally, we design a professional retrieval-augmented generation workflow integrating bilingual hypothetical document generation, dual-path retrieval, and consistency verification, achieving high-quality professional knowledge services. This system provides accurate and reliable professional knowledge services for the industrial catalysis field, demonstrates the application value of domain-specific large language models in resource-constrained environments, and offers a replicable technical pathway for artificial intelligence applications in other specialized domains.

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Publication Details

Journal
Smart Chemical Engineering
Published
2026-03-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.53941/sce.2026.100002
Primary Topic
Topic Modeling
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Domain-Specific Fine-tuning of Large Language Models and Intelligent Question-Answering System for Industrial Catalysis

Xiaoyun Lin, Zhi‐Jian Zhao, Shican Wu, Xin Chang et al.
Smart Chemical Engineering
Topic Modeling
article

Domain-Specific Fine-tuning of Large Language Models and Intelligent Question-Answering System for Industrial Catalysis

Xiaoyun Lin, Zhi‐Jian Zhao, Shican Wu, Xin Chang, Ran Zhao, Xiao Ma
article en

Abstract

Industrial catalysis, as a core field of chemical engineering, is characterized by intensive professional terminology and complex knowledge structures, making it challenging for general-purpose large language models to accurately understand and apply relevant professional knowledge. This research presents a domain-specific fine-tuning technique and retrieval-augmented generation system for the industrial catalysis field. Through a multi-model collaborative data processing pipeline, we construct high-quality training corpora, employ parameter-efficient fine-tuning techniques to train specialized domain models, and design a retrieval-augmented generation workflow based on consistency verification. The research first establishes a training corpus containing 2.3 billion tokens, including 1.1 billion domain-specific tokens and 1.2 billion general tokens with a balanced 1:1 ratio strategy. Subsequently, we apply rank-stabilized low-rank adaptation (rsLoRA) method to perform parameter-efficient fine-tuning on the Yi-1.5-6B model, resulting in the PeiYang Micro-Emergence model, which achieves a score of 76.81 in industrial catalysis field evaluation, significantly outperforming the general-purpose model Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct (65.45 points) with 12 times the parameters, while maintaining good general capabilities. We further construct a 3.37 million domain-specific retrieval pair dataset and optimize the embedding model using Matryoshka representation learning (MRL) techniques, achieving an average improvement of 2.87 percentage points in domain retrieval recall@3 while slightly enhancing general capabilities. Finally, we design a professional retrieval-augmented generation workflow integrating bilingual hypothetical document generation, dual-path retrieval, and consistency verification, achieving high-quality professional knowledge services. This system provides accurate and reliable professional knowledge services for the industrial catalysis field, demonstrates the application value of domain-specific large language models in resource-constrained environments, and offers a replicable technical pathway for artificial intelligence applications in other specialized domains.

Smart Chemical EngineeringVol. 2(1)
Tianjin University (CN), Ministry of Education (ME)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Tianjin University, Project 211, Division of Emerging Frontiers
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 24%
Topic Modeling
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