oa Preface

This issue of Recent Patents on Chemical Engineering contains six reviews, one research paper and selected patents related to materials, instruments and applied technologies in chemical, biological and environmental engineering. It provides the readers with an overall review of the recent patents of the subject area. Recent U.S. inventions related to methane dehydroaromatization processes for production of hydrogen and aromatics were summarized by Lucia M. Petkovic and Daniel M. Ginosar. Patents on particulate measurement systems with emphasis on the instruments were reviewed by Kaushik K. Shandilya and Ashok Kumar. Base on the recent patents on natural zeolites Reyad A. Al Dwairi and Aiman E. Al-Rawajfeh described their applications in water treatment process, agricultural and pharmaceutical industry. A review on synthesis and applications of catalytic coatings especially on the channel walls in micropores were presented by L.N. Protasova and co-workers. Paper from W.K.R. Wong and co-workers focused on extracellular production of heterologous proteins using bacterial systems such as Escherichia coli for commercial applications. Gold-based materials for catalytic oxidation and detection of dioxin emissions from incinerators at lower temperatures were overviewed by Miguel Peixoto de Almeida and Sónia A.C. Carabineiro. The last paper reported the optimum reaction conditions of the extraction of jojoba oil using subcritical water technology by Wael Abdelmoez and co-workers. I thank all the authors for their efforts to make their papers of the high quality. I wish to thank the reviewers for their help in the paper improvements and final decisions. I am thankful to editorial manager Ms. Mehwish Akhter for her constant guidance and assistance. Finally, I hope that the journal will achieve the first Impact Factor in the near future and continue increasing the readership.