The October issue of The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering (CJCE) opens with the announcement of the 2023 Co-winners of the Award for Best Graduate Student Paper. Co-winners Kasturi Nagesh Pai and Nicholas Stiles Wilkins are affiliated with the University of Alberta and work at Svante Inc. in Burnaby, British Columbia, where their focus is adsorption process design and development. Congratulations to our graduate award winners!

Our Editor-in-Chief has chosen to feature the article “CO2 utilization for methanol production; Optimal pathways with minimum GHG reduction cost,” which “investigates two different methanol synthesis routes…CO2 capture and utilization (CCU) and tri-reforming of methane (TRM) ” then “compares the results with the conventional methanol production using natural gas as the feedstock.” This article is free to read for the month of October, so don’t miss out because work in the area of mitigating CO2 emissions is “a critical component of building a sustainable economy.”

The first issue highlight is “The critical mass for the unconfined vapour cloud explosion of compressed and liquid hydrogen,” written by Ernesto Salzano. “The (unconfined) vapour cloud explosion (VCE) is a dramatic phenomenon that generates a severe pressure wave with a high potential to damage assets and produce injuries in the far field.”  “This paper revises some of the most adopted theories on VCE based on classical acoustic theory and models for pressure wave propagation and provides a consequence-based, threshold (minimum) value for the critical mass of hydrogen” needed to produce such an explosion. Anyone can read, download, or share this open access article.

Highlighted next is another open access article titled “Recent advances in hydrogen production through catalytic steam reforming of ethanol: Advances in catalytic design.” “Catalytic reforming is a promising technology for producing renewable fuels.” “This review article presents a comprehensive compilation of the latest advancements” which seek to address “the critical challenges associated with catalyst stability, efficiency, environmental impact, and cost-effectiveness.”

The final highlight of the October issue, “Artificial neural network to predict the power number of agitated tanks fed by CFD simulations,” explores the use of “an artificial neural network (ANN) to create a robust and accurate predictor of the power number” for an agitator without using “multiple empirical equations.” This research article is open access as well, so everyone can read for themselves how “the ANN finds a more general correlation for the power consumption of mixers than the correlations found in the literature.”

In Case You Missed It….

Articles on a wide range of topics in polymer reaction engineering, celebrating a pioneer of the field. The CJCE is also sponsoring a Symposium in Honour of Professor Archie E. Hamielec at the upcoming CSChE 2023 conference in Calgary.

15 articles with the most downloads so far this year, all free to read until November 15. The virtual issue covers a wide range of topics that are of interest to chemical engineers today.