Modelling and Optimisation in Chemical and Biological Engineering: Application to Wastewater and Gas Treatment

The 1st International Chemical Engineering Congress – ICEC’13 has been successfully organised at Djerba, Tunisia from December 16th to 19th, 2013. This conference has been hosted by the Laboratory of Process Engineering & Industrial Systems, National School of Engineers, University of Gabes and co-organised with the Tunisian Chemical Engineering Society (TChES). The main objective of the ICEC conferences is to offer opportunities for scientific connections. This scientific meeting includes presentation and discussion on the recent research findings in many chemical engineering issues such as modelling and optimisation, catalysis and reaction, process control, water treatment and atmospheric pollution reduction. Another important activity during the ICEC’13 has been the exchange between international scientific researchers, conception of new research projects and the implementation of collaboration between research laboratories. The ICEC’13 congress has attracted 344 abstracts from 13 countries. Of these 214 papers were selected by the ICEC’13 International Scientific Committee for inclusion in the final programme, which included four plenary lectures from leading scientists around the world (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) and 88 oral presentations and 126 posters. All papers have undergone a formal peer-reviewed procedure to ensure the highest possible technical quality assisted by more than 80 reviewers. Ten papers have been selected for this special issue and after being peer-reviewed five were accepted for publication covering important subjects of wastewater and exhaust gas treatments. Three papers focus on modelling and simulation in biological and chemical engineering. Adsorption, separation and purification technologies are described in these papers, with the aim of optimizing process and understanding reaction pathways. The next papers correspond to experimental studies dealing with water purification, oxygen transfer in batch reactor and NO2 adsorption on activated carbon. The Guest Editors of this special issue are thankful to the Editors-in-Chief of International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering, Professor Charles Xu and Professor Hugo de Lasa, for providing an opportunity to publish selected peer reviewed papers that were presented at the ICEC’2013. Thanks are also due to the entire production team of the journal for their valuable support in bringing out this issue. Last but not least, our sincere appreciation to all the reviewers for their invaluable and critical review comments on manuscripts that were submitted for this special issue.