COMS

Energy, raw materials and feedstock resources will become increasingly scarce in the next decades while the demand is increasing tremendously in many world regions. Novel technologies and processes are needed for example for the efficient production of chemicals from biomass feedstocks and for the use of renewable and clean energy sources for electricity production and transportation. The growth and aging of the world population requires new and innovative health systems, such as in the field of controlled drug release, development of smart medical devices, and application of smart diagnostics and analytics. The quality of life is largely dependent on the air and water quality, the degree of emission reduction, development of new personal care and food products, and not to forget on improving process and product safety.

We hope that these three symposium sub-themes will motivate and inspire you to submit exciting and challenging abstracts that may cover many different aspects of these themes. For further guidance, we have collected a number of topics under four different levels, - ranging from fundamental principles to commercial applications -, that might serve as examples of possible contributions.

Although it is now clear that the Hofmeister series is intimately connected with ion hydration in homogeneous and heterogeneous environments and with ion pairing, the molecular origin of these effects has been poorly understood. Biochemists and physical chemists have been typically using the term Hofmeister series to put a label on ion specific behavior in various environments, rather than to reach a molecular level understanding and, consequently, an ability to predict a particular effect of a specific salt ion.