Preface

Preface

Jaime Cerdá

INTEC

Universidad Nacional del Litoral, CONICET, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina

^{Address to correspondence}

This special issue contains extended versions of selected papers presented at ENPROMER 2001 held in Santa Fe, Argentina during 16-20 September, 2001. ENPROMER 2001 was organized by the Chemical Engineering School at Universidad Nacional del Litoral, the CONICET Regional Center for Research and Development at Santa Fe (CERIDE) and the research institutes INTEC and INGAR. It was the third in the biennial series of MERCOSUR Conferences on Process Systems Engineering initiated at Bahía Blanca, Argentina in 1997. The purpose of the meeting is to join up researchers, managers and practitioners from academia and industry, involved in the creation and application of computing based methodologies for planning, design, operation and control of chemical processes. To simultaneously run the 1^st MERCOSUR Congress on Chemical Engineering, the scope of the Conference was expanded to also include other important research areas in chemical engineering like food science and engineering, biotechnology, materials science and environmental engineering.

ENPROMER has traditionally served as a forum for scientists and practitioners from MERCOSUR countries and other American nations to present and review the latest achievements on different PSE research topics. In addition, it provides a great opportunity for in depth discussions between industry and academia on areas of common interest for joint collaboration and new practical challenges in the PSE field. In this third edition, a special attention was given to contributions from industry, by including a conference session devoted to industrial applications and case studies.

The International Scientific Committee reviewed a total of 530 abstracts from nine American nations, 62 more than in the previous edition. Out of them, 319 six-page manuscripts were finally accepted for oral or poster presentation at ENPROMER 2001 and reported in the Conference Proceedings. Contributions were submitted from twenty-one Argentine universities, fourteen Brazilian universities and other eleven American universities. The Scientific Program Committee selected around one-third of the papers for possible inclusion in Special Issues of Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering and Latin American Applied Research.

After the Conference, extended versions of selected papers submitted to BJChE underwent careful peer review. Those papers that passed the evaluation were included in this special issue. The assistance of the reviewers in the evaluation process is greatly appreciated.

On behalf of ENPROMER 2001 organizing committee, I wish to acknowledge the valuable cooperation and advice from the International Scientific Committee and all the reviewers who guaranteed the quality of the papers and the excellence of the Conference. I am also grateful to all the people who collaborated in organizing and running the Conference, to CONICET and those industrial companies that gave financial support to this event and, finally, to the Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering for providing the chance of publishing a number of selected papers that fitted the standards set by the journal. We hope that this issue will be a valuable contribution to the process systems engineering field.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  19 Mar 2003
• Date of issue
  Mar 2003