Preface--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

Mesoscale phenomena are ubiquitous in multiphase reaction systems where the material, reactor and system levels all feature the mesoscale structures, such as molecular assemblies, particle (bubble/droplet) clusters, or reactor networks, respectively. Understanding the common laws behind them is probably the next bigger thing beyond nanoscience, or brings about the so-called mesoscience. It is viewed as the base or key to rational design and synthesis of materials, process scaleup, and system optimization, but a grand challenge to chemistry and chemical engineering community.

In response to this common challenge, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) launched a major research plan on mesoscience entitled “Mechanism and manipulation of mesoscales in multiphase reaction processes” in 2012. 116 projects have been funded through peer-review since then, including 21 key projects and 94 general projects. The researchers of the first five key projects launched in 2013 have summarized their understanding and progress of this topic in the book series Advances in Chemical Engineering in 2015. This special issue then collects the contribution from the researchers of the succeeding 16 key projects from 2014 to 2017 within the framework of the major research plan. The topic covers the mesoscale problems at two levels, i.e., the interfacial phenomena between molecules and a particle/droplet/bubble (Mesoscale 1), and the particle (bubble/droplet) clustering phenomena between a single particle/droplet/bubble and a reactor (Mesoscale 2). As an emerging paradigm, mesoscience may provide a new perspective to traditional problems. We believe the papers in this special issue could supply new viewpoints towards deeper learning and understanding of mesoscience in previous five years, and we shall do better in the next five years.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

文章导读