March 2012

First off, it may come as news to most of you, but ‘Chemical Technology' is celebrating its 20th birthday this year! We have been bringing you chemical engineering content for two decades and hope that you all enjoy what we have on offer every month. For the first few years, until 2002, ‘ChemTech', as we fondly call it, was a bi-monthly publication, ie, one every two months, but since January of that year, it has come out regularly every month, twelve times a year! That's a lot of reading!

Second on my list of things to tell you, is to remind you that entries for our annual Awards close at the end of April. Please don't delay in sending in your papers for the various categories. Use the link alongsideto read the rules for the competition.

Third, I want to bring to your attention an opinion piece by Brendan Young, Director of Sales and Business Development for Building Efficiency at Johnson Controls Energy Solutions Europe-Africa. He writes about how business efficiency needs smarter cities and smarter buildings:

"The expanded smart city concept features a smarter, more intelligently designed city infrastructure that enables all elements to work in harmony with each other and the environment. It combines elements such as economic development, transportation, social services, education, public safety, healthcare and energies into a holistic entity that uses resources more efficiently and provides a sustainable way of living for the populations of the future. Improving building efficiency and adopting green business and building standards such as those promoted by the smart city concept, as well as implementing smart technology, are the first steps in achieving the goal of reducing waste."

Read the whole opinion piece here.

This month's issue features five main technical articles on, amongst others, Corrosion and Coatings Engineering, which discusses a green approach to inorganic pigments: "Greener coatings demand more environmentally-friendly pigments; does this constitute a threat or an opportunity for inorganic pigments producers? During the last decades the European Union authorities have become very much aware of the need to do everything possible to ensure a sustainable and healthy development of our world. One of the consequences of this is that paints and coatings producers have been facing a tremendous challenge to meet more demanding environmental requirements for their products."

The Control and Instrumentation feature is all about smart pumping systems, and the Environmental Engineering one looks at a local company which is setting trends in the trenchless technologies field.

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