Preface

Chemical industry is strongly related with the construction and development of national economy and is believed to be the foundation of the national economy all over the world.Since the year of 2010,the economic aggregate of chemical industry of China has ranked first in the world.New Separation processes(i.e.membrane separation,supercritical fluid extraction,adsorption separation,gravity separation,ionic liquids,and new distillation separation technology)have been developing along with the development of chemical industry.The close relationship between separation process and chemical industry is witnessed in the whole chemical process from the raw material pretreatment,intermediate products,products refined purification to treatment of the wastewater,exhaust gas and residue.Separation technology guarantees chemical product quantity,resource utilization,energy conservation and emissions reduction,and environmental protection.In recent years,an increasing development has occurred in the petrochemical industry and coal chemical industry in China.Meanwhile,the Chinese government has changed the previous chemical and petrochemical industry development to focus on the process intensification of separation process in order to achieve quality and efficiency improvement,and green lowcarbon development.Instead of the incremental development,separation process needs new methods including the advanced separation technology, the coupling technology of several separation methods,and the multidisciplinary research in traditional separation technology and other subjects.Chinese scientific researchers have obtained a series of innovative achievements in the process intensification of separation.In order to exhibit the achievements,we invite the Chinese experts in the field of chemical separation to publish their recent work and understanding of process intensification of separation on the special issue“Separation Process Intensification of Chemical Engineering”of Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering.It is expected to help readers to get the knowledge of the present situation of the separation process intensification in China,and better promote its development.