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The July issue of CJCE features the latest addition to the ongoing Perspectives in Chemical Engineering Special Series, as well as three other issue highlight articles, all of which are open access.
The Editor’s Choice article of this issue is “Microplastics and nanoplastics in water: Improving removal in wastewater treatment plants with alternative coagulants” by Sinan Abi Farraj, Mathieu Lapointe, Rafael S. Kurusu, and Nathalie Tufenkji. In this article the authors note that “coagulation, flocculation, and settling have been shown to be important processes to remove micro- and nano-sized plastic contaminants” though “limited research has been conducted to assess how challenging water chemistry characteristics (including water pH and presence of wastewater colloids) and treatment conditions (such as settling time, coagulant type, flocculant type) impact the removal of these contaminants.” The results presented in this article “show that plastic removal declines at higher pH values using conventional alum as a coagulant” and show “how coagulant and flocculant selection and environmental conditions, including pH and interactions with wastewater colloids, can affect plastic contaminant removal during primary treatment.” In addition, this work “revealed that municipalities can enhance nanoplastic and microfibre removal using alternative aluminium-based coagulants under challenging pH conditions.”
The second issue highlight is an open access article and the latest addition to the Perspectives in Chemical Engineering Special Series: “Smiling warnings and silent complicity: An autoethnographic reflection on academic bullying and mobbing” by Daniele Marchisio. In this article, the author notes that “academic bullying and mobbing are increasingly recognized as systemic features of contemporary higher education rather than isolated interpersonal conflicts.” This article “presents three anonymized vignettes from the field of chemical engineering to illustrate how identity-based coercion, institutional indifference, and enabling behaviours operate within academic culture.” The “analysis highlights the central role of power asymmetries, competitive pressures, organizational narcissism, and the normalization of excellence as mechanisms that render bullying morally ambiguous or institutionally invisible” and “the article concludes by outlining structural and cultural interventions, including enforceable codes of conduct, systematic data collection, and collective awareness initiatives, as necessary steps toward fostering ethical and inclusive academic environments.”
The next issue highlight is titled “Modelling of continuous low-temperature emulsion co-polymerization in 3D-printed reactor” by Ferel Issa, Andreas Reinbeck, and Kristina M. Zentel. This study “presents a kinetic model of the low-temperature emulsion copolymerization of butyl acrylate and styrene, initiated by a TBHP/ASAc/Fe redox system.” This model was “developed using Predici 11 as first principles model” and can “predict the behaviour of the investigated system with regard to monomer conversion (up to 100%), particle size, particle number, and molecular weight distributions” as well as “other properties such as the composition of the different phases during the polymerization (i.e., in the aqueous phase, the polymer phase, and the droplet phase).” Ultimately, it “provides a reliable tool for the development and optimization of emulsion copolymerization processes in both batch and continuous operating modes by predicting key reaction outcomes.”
The final issue highlight is an article titled “Characterization of a two-phase hybrid flotation column” by Pedro Silva Aires, Artin Afacan, Qi Liu, and Vinay Prasad. This study “explored the performance of a novel hybrid flotation column, which combines the advantages of a mechanically agitated cell with a flotation column and compared the results with a conventional flotation column setup.” The results “showed that the hybrid column achieved greater gas holdup while achieving similar bubble size distributions at higher impeller speeds, outperforming the conventional column when speeds of 1500 rpm were used” and “suggest that the hybrid flotation column design could improve the recovery of fine particles in flotation operations, offering a promising solution for processing low-grade ores.”
Have you accessed CJCE’s latest virtual issue Perspectives and Conversations in Chemical Engineering? In this virtual issue, CJCE features articles from the ongoing Perspectives in Chemical Engineering Special Series as well as the Conversations in Chemical Engineering Special Series published from 2023 to 2026. Be sure to check it out while it is free to read!