The Editor’s Choice article from the February issue of CJCE is an open access article titled “Magnetic adsorbents from co-pyrolysis of non-woody biomass and red mud for water decontamination” by Griffin Loebsack, Kang Kang, Ken K.-C. Yeung, Mattia Bartoli, Franco Berruti, and Naomi B. Klinghoffer of Western University and Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy. In this study, the authors note that “Red mud (RM) and non-woody biomass are both underutilized resources for renewable composite materials, which could be used in environmental decontamination processes”. As a result, the aim of the study is to “investigate the efficacy of co-pyrolyzing non-woody biomass with RM to produce a magnetic biochar composite.” Be sure to check out this open access article for the results!
This issue also features an editorial from CJCE Editor-in-Chief João B. P. Soares discussing the journal’s most recent virtual issue “2024 in Review: Top Trending Articles”—which will be free-to-read until the end of the month. It this editorial, Dr. Soares reviews the 15 top-viewed articles of 2024, highlighting that these articles “cover many areas of chemical engineering—composites, carbon capture, circular-plastic economy, polymeric materials, experimental methods in chemical engineering, microfluidic devices, risk and safety, oil and gas, and educational aspects related to the future chemical engineering—and showcase the fascinating breadth of our profession.” Be sure to access this virtual issue while it is still free-to-read.
The second issue highlight from the February issue is another open access article: “A non-ionic green surfactant extracted from the Anabasis setifera plant for improving bulk properties of CO2-foam in the process of enhanced oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs” by Iman Nowrouzi, Amir H. Mohammadi, and Abbas Khaksar Manshad of University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Petroleum University of Technology, Iran. In this study, “a non-ionic green surfactant derived from the Anabasis setifera plant was used as a foaming agent, while CO2 served as the gas phase. A series of surface tension tests in CO2 environment were performed to determine the optimal concentration of the surfactant. Foaming tests were performed by a designed foam generator. The produced CO2-foam was then injected into a fractured carbonate plug with six matrixes (with one horizontal and two vertical fractures).”
The final issue highlight is an open access article from authors Lauren A. Gibson and Kimberley B. McAuley of Queen’s University: “Bayesian parameter estimation using truncated normal distributions as priors for parameters in fundamental models of chemical processes”. In this article, the authors “derive closed-form objective functions for Bayesian parameter estimation with truncated normal priors and uniform priors, for the first time, so that parameter estimation can be performed by solving simple optimization problems rather than using complex sampling-based techniques. A parametric bootstrapping method that considers truncated normal priors and model nonlinearity is proposed to determine 95% confidence intervals and joint confidence regions. A pharmaceutical case study is used to show the effectiveness of the proposed objective functions and bootstrapping methodology.” The authors also note that “The proposed methods will be attractive for parameter estimation in complex process models because they can be less computationally intensive than Markov chain Monte Carlo methods that provide similar results.”