The April issue of CJCE features the Norman Epstein Memorial Special Issue Section. The special section opens with the preface to the Special Section in Honour of Professor Norman Epstein of the University of British Columbia, written by CJCE Editor-in-Chief João B. P. Soares. Within the preface, Dr. Soares reflects upon the immense impact that Professor Norman Epstein, Editor-in-Chief of CJCE from January 1985 to December 1989, had upon the chemical engineering field in the areas of spouted beds, heat exchanger fouling, liquid–solid and three-phase fluidization, and dynamic particulate processes. Dr. Soares also reflects on the lasting impression Prof. Epstein left on those who knew him personally and professionally:
Rare are the people who, upon a first meeting, etch an indelible mark upon your mind. Professor Normal Epstein was such a person.
I had the privilege of first meeting him relatively late in my career, during one of the annual receptions of The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering (CJCE). As a former Editor-in-Chief of the CJCE (from January 1985 to December 1989), Prof. Epstein made it a point to attend the CJCE receptions during the yearly CSChE conferences all the way up into his nineties. I remember the pleasant conversations we had during these meetings, as well as the invaluable pieces of advice he gave me on how to manage the CJCE. (Talk about large shoes to fill!) He was also a regular reviewer of papers for our Journal. And what reviews they were: scientifically accurate, meticulous, respectful of the authors’ ideas but not afraid of pointing out the weak points in their reasoning, and written in an elegant style that is now lost to most of us—in longhand!
The Editor’s Choice article of the April issue an open access article from this special issue section titled “A review on applications of fine particles integrated with fluidization technologies” by Yue Song, Yue Yuan, and Jesse Zhu of the University of Western Ontario. As indicated by the authors in the abstract, this article provides “provides a comprehensive overview of fine particle utilization integrated with fluidization technologies, demonstrating the potential in large-scale industrial processes, and enabling significant advancements in practical applications.”
The next issue highlight from the April issue is another open access article from the special issue section: “Cohesive particle–fluid systems: An overview of their CFD simulation” by Filippo Marchelli, Luca Fiori, and Renzo Di Felice from University of Trento, Italy, and University of Genova, Italy. Within this article, the authors explore cohesive particle–fluid systems: “Solid particles may experience different kinds of cohesive forces, which cause them to form agglomerates and affect their flow in multiphase systems. When such systems are simulated through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) programs, appropriate modelling tools must be included to reproduce this feature. In this review, these strategies are addressed for various systems and scales. After an introduction of the different forces (van der Waals, electrostatic, liquid bridge forces, etc.), the modelling approaches are categorized under three methodologies.”
The final two issue highlight articles are not a part of the special issue section, but fit within CJCE’s Transport Phenomena, Fluid Dynamics, and Thermodynamics content category. The first, an open access article titled “Thermodynamic modelling of gas hydrate dissociation conditions in porous medium in the presence of NaCl/methanol aqueous solution” by Samira Hashemzadeh, Jafar Javanmardi, Ali Rasoolzadeh, and Amir H. Mohammadi, investigates “the dissociation of gas hydrates in porous media in the presence of inhibitors”: “Due to the growing significance of the existence of gas hydrates in natural media like the ocean floor/permafrost regions and the extraction of natural gas from hydrate reservoirs using thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors, investigating the dissociation of gas hydrates in porous media in the presence of inhibitors is crucial. This work examines a broad range of laboratory data on the dissociation conditions of gas hydrates in the porous mediums when salt/alcohol aqueous solutions are present.”
The second is another open access article, titled “Pressure loss in packed beds of multicomponent mixtures of flat particles with particle overlap, including random chips” by Evangelina Schonfeldt and William L. H. Hallett of University of Ottawa. Within this article, “Pressure loss measurements are presented for packed beds of multi-component mixtures of thin angular parallelepipeds and of random wood chips for a Reynolds number range of 50 to 500. For flat particles like these, the degree to which the particles overlap is an essential factor in pressure loss, and this was measured using two different methods, including a novel technique involving progressive dismantling and photography of the bed.”