The past years have seen a tremendous change of approaches to chemical engineering, a veritable paradigm shift.

For a very long time unit operations used to be the organising criterion and most of the research could be summarised under a respective headline representing and introduced in one of the respective divisions.

Some years ago, shortly but steadily interdisciplinary approaches became more and more popular.

Co-operations of teams each of them representing a certain discipline and contributing their special scientific background became more popular – a fact that is reflected by the increasing number of authors of most published scientific papers.

Today, as a result of the development we see completely new topics arising: Micro reaction technology, process intensification, green chemistry, change of raw materials with an emphasis on renewables.

Are these topics actually that new? Not necessarily.

“We used to do this for ages, we just did not call it like this!” scientists say. Point taken – but nevertheless many scientists appreciate that the new classification scheme helps them look beyond their own horizon.

The Journal Chemical Engineering and Technology from Wiley-VCH as a platform for the exchange of knowledge has accepted this request. Combining papers reflecting different aspects of such topics and publish them within topical issues has proven one of the most effective measures to serve authors and readers. Recent issues have covered heat transfer and mass transfer, microsystem technology, modelling, parameter estimation, corrosion, and emission and pollution control.

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA is based in Weinheim, Germany. www.www.wiley-vch.de