Editorial: Editors’ showcase: Environmental chemical engineering

Abstract

The objective of this Research Topic was to collect high quality contributions evaluating novel developments, current challenges, latest discoveries and future perspectives, across the scope of our Environmental chemical engineering section. In this sense, my opinion is that the objectives have been fulfilled. Among the papers published, we can found perspective papers, reviews and original papers showing the last advances in several Environmental chemical engineering topics. Among chemical engineers, there has have been always a discussion on the paradigms of this discipline. Although the first two are clear: the first paradigm–unit operations–at the end of 19th century and the second one in the late 1950s–transport phenomena–a discussion has been alive about the third paradigm. At the beginning of 2000s, it seems that product engineering was recognized as the third paradigm (Woinaroschy, 2016), but science have evolved so fast, together with the birth of worldwide problems where the participation of Chemical Engineering is critical, has pointed out that probably the third paradigm, at least in general terms, should be multidisciplinarity. In this sense, current Chemical Engineering works involve fields such as Environmental Sciences, Material Science and Energy. Environmental sciences and Chemical Engineering have already a consolidated relationship, from wastewater treatment design to bioremediation of soils and polluted gases. Probably the field of biological waste management is less explored from a chemical engineering perspective, and this is the main topic of one of the reviews published Sánchez. In the case of Materials Science, the amount of studies involving nanomaterials with implications in Chemical Engineering has dramatically increased. From the use of nanoparticles as heterogonous highly selective and efficient catalysts in classical bulk chemical reactions to their use in environmental remediation, the number of publications grows each month. As example, a paper published is related to the use of graphene for the removal of pollutants in water and wastewater Melo et al. In particular, recent works point graphene as a material with an enormous potential for the development of Chemical Engineering. Finally, I would like to mention some papers that I particularly like: those related to ambitious nexus of Chemical Engineering with other disciplines, which should have a predominant role: the nexus environment-nanomaterials-renewable energy is a good example (Svetlana et al., 2019), where some emerging works are being published Casals et al. OPEN ACCESS