Have you heard about the 2024 winners of CJCE’s awards? Congratulations to Bernard Twum Agyeman, 2024 winner of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award, for his article “An LSTM-based mixed-integer model predictive control for irrigation scheduling”. This was also selected by two CJCE associate editors as a top article to be included the Resonating Research: Editors’ Picks virtual issue earlier this year. And congratulations to Mohammad Arjmand, 2024 winner of the Lectureship Award. The September issue features biographies from the winners, so be sure to read these to learn more about the incredible work being done by these outstanding award winners.
The September Issue features interesting new additions to three of CJCE’s ongoing special series: Conversations in Chemical Engineering, Experimental Methods, and Process Safety special series.
This month’s Editor’s Choice article is an open access article that is a part of the ongoing Conversations in Chemical Engineering Special Series: “Gasification for material recycling—A solution to the plastic flood?” by Corinna Schulze-Netzer of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. In this article, Dr. Schulze-Netzer discusses how “steam gasification stands out as one of the most promising approaches for recycling mixed, contaminated, and unsortable plastics”. While “this method utilizes high temperatures”, the “resulting gas can be reformed through hydrocarbon syntheses” and the “biomass can be used as a substitute for an extension of the carbon feed, ultimately reducing reliance on fossil feedstock”. As a result, “steam gasification can significantly increase recycling rates and contribute to a bio-integrated circular carbon economy.”
The second issue highlight is another special series article, this time from the Experimental Methods in Chemical Engineering Special Series: “Experimental methods in chemical engineering: Karl Fischer titration” by Paula Rivera-Quintero, Gregory S. Patience, Nicolas A. Patience, Daria C. Boffito, Xavier Banquy, and Dalma Schieppati of Polytechnique Montréal and Université de Montréal. This article provides a thorough review of the Karl Fischer titration method and its diverse applications and provides an overview of research themes of articles being published that mention this technique.
The third issue highlight from the September issue is a new addition to the Process Safety Special Series: “A mechanistic model for industrial workplace design based on inherent safety and health concepts” by Xiaoming Gao, Guohua Chen, Caiyi Xiong, Xiaofeng Li, Yimeng Zhao, and Honghao Chen from South China University of Technology. This article “aims to establish a mechanistic model of using inherent safety and health concepts to conduct industrial workplace risk reduction strategies during the project planning stage.” To do so, a “dedicated implementation tool termed inherently safer and healthier design model for industrial workplaces (ISHDM-IW) is developed” and the tool “offers a novel design mechanism of inherent safety and health for industrial workplaces, which can be expected to ensure employees’ safety, health, and well-being with fundamentally better ergonomics of industrial work environments.” This article is free-to-read for the month of September, so be sure to check it out.
In the final featured article of this issue, a review article titled “Hydrocracking of non-edible vegetable oil and waste cooking oils for the production of light hydrocarbon fuels: A review”, authors Sharron Ratshoshi, Hembe Elie Mukaya, and Diakanua Nkazi from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, examine “hydrocracking as a biofuel production method and further elucidates different feedstocks, the effects of hydrocracking catalysts, and operating parameters to obtain optimum yields and selectivity of desired products.” The review finds that hydrocracking is “more advantageous than other biofuel production techniques such as transesterification and pyrolysis due to its ability to produce valuable products of better quality and with higher yields.” Be sure to explore this review article this month while it is free-to-read.