Abstract - Tsotsis - 9714377 Chemical Reaction Engineering (CRE) is the field which deals with the design and engineering aspects of chemically reactive systems. It first arose in the 1940s and 1950s to meet the technical needs of the petroleum and chemical industry. The objective of CRE is to relate chemical reactor performance to feed materials characteristics and operating variables. From the catalytic hydrocracking of heavy petroleum fractions to produce gasoline and other fuels, to the chemical vapor deposition of thin films for microelectronics applications, CRE is an active, productive research area. The primary meetings for the international CRE community are the biennial International Symposia in Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE) conferences. The location of these meetings alternates between Europe and North America. These conferences bring together for three days international practitioners of the field from both academia and industry. ISCRE 15 is slated to take place in Newport Beach, CA on September 13-16, 1998 and its theme is "Chemical Reaction Engineering for a Cleaner Environment, Advanced Materials Processing and Increased Profitability." Though ISCRE 15 will emphasize the fundamentals, of equal importance will be the technological advances that are currently shaping the future of the field. Topical areas will include: o Reactors for Materials Processing o Waste Minimization and Remediation o Environmentally Benign Processing o Reactor Dynamics o Reactor Control and Safety o Reactor Scale-up and Economic Evaluation o Computational and Modeling Aspects of Reaction/Reactor Engineering o Fluid-Solid Catalytic and Non-Catalytic Reaction Systems o Catalytic, Polymerization and Biochemical Reactors
