Fuels of the future

This themed issue contains peer-reviewed papers to be presented at the Symposium on Green Chemistry for Fuels of the Future as a part of the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) to be held in San Francisco, CA, USA on March 21–25, 2010. The guest editors are grateful to the sponsorship of the Division of Fuel Chemistry of ACS, the ACS-Petroleum Research Fund and the theme program of the 239th ACS National Meetings. The central topic of the symposium and, consequently, this special issue is the interface between green chemistry and the future fuels. Over the past several years, the uses of green chemistry have been applied and continue to play a decisive role for shaping the spectrum of fuels that have a chance of success on the ever-growing and diversifying energy sector. The Fuels of the Future Symposium and this special issue, therefore, focus on the design, development, analysis and processing of the future fuels, including fossil fuels and biofuels, that sustain the environment in a way that is both feasible and economically viable. It includes utilizing alternative feedstocks to replace the depleting petroleum-based feedstocks or other fossil-based feedstocks, developing novel catalysts and nanomaterials, improving energy and emission efficiency of conventional and non-conventional processes, developing ultraclean fuels, using unique instrumentation of material and process characterization, and identifying renewable energy resources for future applications. Green Chemistry for Fuels of the Future will remain a great challenge and also a rewarding experience to chemists and engineers worldwide. This themed issue is the first one in the journal Energy & Environmental Science. The issue shows the progress and contains some of the very recent findings in this very important field. It covers most of the important topics as responses to the above mentioned challenges.

We are confident that the research and application progress in this important field will accelerate significantly after the scientific community witnesses the symposium and reviews this themed issue. We acknowledge all authors for their contributions to the success of this themed issue and the Green Chemistry symposium. Thanks are also due to all of the referees. It is their careful review of the creative work that makes this issue possible. We also owe special appreciation to the managing editor of Energy & Environmental Science, Mr. Philip Earis, and other editors for their interest and support for this important topic and the special issue.

Ben W.-L. Jang, Texas A&M University-Commerce, USA.

Roger Gläser, University of Leipzig , Germany

Mingdong Dong, Aarhus University, Denmark

Chang-Jun Liu, Tianjin University, China

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