Call for Papers

Designing Advanced Catalysts for Clean Energy and Environment

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 31 December 2025

With the escalating global demand for sustainable energy solutions and urgent environmental challenges, the development of advanced catalysts has emerged as a cornerstone for achieving clean energy conversion and pollution mitigation. Catalysts play a pivotal role in enabling efficient chemical transformations under mild conditions, reducing energy consumption, and minimizing harmful byproducts. For instance, photocatalysts can harness solar energy to split water into hydrogen, while electrocatalysts facilitate CO2 reduction into valuable fuels. Nanostructured and bio-inspired catalysts further demonstrate unparalleled selectivity and stability, offering greener alternatives to traditional industrial processes. However, critical gaps remain in optimizing their activity, durability, and scalability for real-world applications.

The Asia-Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering invites submissions to this special issue focused on innovative strategies for designing, characterizing, and applying advanced catalysts in energy and environmental systems. We encourage original research articles that provide deep insights into catalyst design principles and their environmental/energy impacts. Comprehensive reviews addressing challenges, breakthroughs, and future directions in this rapidly evolving field are also welcome. By bridging fundamental science and practical applications, this Special Issue aims to inspire transformative solutions for a sustainable future.


Topics of interest for this call for papers include but are not restricted to:

  • Novel catalysts (e.g., single-atom catalysts, MOFs, biomimetic materials, MXene, high-entropy materials, etc.) for clean energy processes (photo-, electro-, thermal-catalytic, etc.) involving energy conversion or storage;
  • Novel catalysts for pollutant/wastewater degradation or mitigation through various catalytic pathways (catalytic, electrocatalytic, photocatalytic, photoelectrochemical, etc.);
  • Mechanistic studies on catalytic pathways for various processes (water splitting, CO2 conversion, methane reforming, or wastewater treatment, etc.);
  • Advanced characterization techniques (in-situ/operando spectroscopy, computational modeling) to unravel structure-activity relationships;
  • Scalable catalyst engineering and techno-economic analyses for industrial adoption.

Guest Editors:

Dr. Xiaomin Xu (Lead)
Curtin University,
Australia

Dr. Guoxing Chen
Technical University of Darmstadt,
Germany

Dr. Changmin Kim
University of Suwon,
Republic of Korea

Dr. Jinqiang Zhang
University of Adelaide,
Australia


Keywords:

Advanced characterizations; Catalyst; Circular economy; Energy conversion; Energy storage; Environmental remediation; Mechanism; Modelling; Plastic recycling; Wastewater treatment.


Submission Guidelines/Instructions:

Please refer to the Author Guidelines to prepare your manuscript. When submitting your manuscript, please answer the question "Is this submission for a special issue?" by selecting the special issue title from the drop-down list.

Submit now