It is a great honor and pleasure for me to publish this special issue of the Current Environmental
Engineering, dedicated to the International Conference on Sustainable Development for Energy and
Environment (ICSDEE-2017) organized on January 16th & 17th 2017 at National Chemical Laboratory
(CSIR-NCL) Pune, India.
This international conference was jointly organized by CSIR-NCL, IIChE-PRC (Indian Institute of
Chemical Engineers, Pune Chapter) and MIT (Maharashtra Institute of Technology), Pune to provide a
roadmap for sustainable development for energy and environment. The conference provided an international
forum for bringing together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to
exchange their research ideas and results, and to discuss the state of the art in the areas of energy, chemicals
manufacturing, and environment pollution remediation techniques for sustainable development.
Around 300 participants from different parts of India as well as from abroad attended the ICSDEE-
2017 more than 85 presentations were delivered, including 2 keynote addresses, 24 invited talks among
which 8 were from Industries, 27 posters and 44 oral presentations. All these presentations were highquality
original work reports covering a wide range of topics.
Renowned keynote speakers from India as well as from abroad delivered their talks on the topics of
energy and environment. They covered areas of sustainable catalysis for the synthesis of environmentally
benign chemicals, recovery of methane by gas hydrate technique, fuel cell, solid waste management, biolubricants,
biofuels, hydrogen generation, removal of toxic heavy metal from aqueous solution, water
purification, wastewater treatment by Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPS), sewage water treatment,
etc. An overwhelming response was received from the experienced researchers as well as from the
students for both oral and poster presentations. These presentations covered their recent results, as well as
discussed the research challenges, new applications, and proposed methodologies for evaluating and
providing a roadmap for achieving the vision of Sustainable Development for Energy and Environment.
This special issue includes some of the selected papers presented in the conference. All these papers
have successfully conceded the reviewing process of the Current Environmental Engineering Journal. A
relatively short number (08) of articles have been selected particularly focusing on the following topics;
sustainable catalysis for the synthesis of environmentally benign chemicals, recovery of methane by gas
hydrate technique, removal of toxic heavy metal from aqueous solution, composite material for energy
and environmental applications, wastewater treatment by Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPS), sewage
water treatment.
The titles and authors of the articles included in this issue are as follows:
1) Roopa D. Parate, Chandrashekhar V. Rode and Mahesh S. Dharne, 2,3-Butanediol Production from
Biodiesel Derived Glycerol
2) Masayuki Shirai, Osamu Sato, Aritomo Yamaguchi and Chandrashekhar V. Rode, Environmentally
Benign Chemicals Production from Unused Resources using Water Solvent.
3) Suresh Kumar Dash, Susanginee Nayak, Snehaprava Das and Kulamani Parida. Smart 2D-2D Nano-
Composite Adsorbents of LDH-Carbonaceous Materials for Removal of Aqueous Toxic Heavy Metal
Ions: A Review.
4) Gayatri S. Gera, Vaibhav Salunkhe, Ulhas Kharul, Supriya Y. Jadhav, Prajakatta Mulay, Tanushree
Bhattacharjee and Sanjay Kamble. Treatment of Sewage Water Using Microalgae in Combination with
Membrane Bioreactor: An Eco-Friendly Approach.
5) Sammit E. Karekar, Kunal A. Gondhalekar, Dipak K. Chandre, Shirish H. Sonawane and Dipak V.
Pinjari. Acoustic Cavitation Assisted Preparation of Poly(Acrylic Acid)-Halloysitenanoclay Hydrogel
for Removal of Auramine O Dye from Effluent.
6) Shishir Tiwary, Makarand Naniwadekar, Rupali Sonolikar, Sanket Bapat, Aditi Yerudkar, Sanjay P.
Kamble, Gaurav Kothari and Sanjeev S. Tambe, Prediction of Rate Constant of Photocatalytic
Degradation of Pharmaceutical Pollutants by Artificial Intelligence based Genetic Programming
Formalism.
7) Umakant Verma, Jitendra B. Naik, Rutuja Deshmukh and Satyendra Mishra. Development of
Biodegradable Glimepiride Loaded Chitosan Nano Particles: A Factorial Design Approach.
8) Vivek Barmecha, Gaurav Bhattacharjee, Rajnish Kumar, Nilesh Choudhary, Sanjay P. Kamble, Kiran
Patil, Omkar S. Kushwaha and Asheesh Kumar. Formation and Dissociation Kinetics in Simulated
Hydrate Bearing Reservoir.
As the Guest Editor of this issue, I would like to express my warm gratitude to all the members of the
Organizing Committee, Advisory Committee and Scientific Committee. I would like to extend special
thanks to Prof. Ashwini Kumar Nangia, Director CSIR-NCL, for his enormous support and leadership in
the organization of this event. Also, I would like to thank all the authors for their contributions, the Invited
Speakers for their state-of-the-art plenary presentations, the Reviewers for their comprehensive and timely
reviewing of the articles, and our sponsors who have generously helped to make this conference a grand
success.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief Prof. Jong Moon Park and editorial
team particularly Ramsha Abid, Saina Shahab (both Assistant Manager) as without their invaluable
suggestions and help this Special Issue would never have been possible.
