Preface

Abstract

ICESE 2021 was successfully held in a virtual conference mode between September 10 and 13, 2021. It was a scientific and engineering success. This conference was originally set to be hosted and held offline in Vienna, Austria. Due to the worldwide spread of Covid-19, the pandemic situation in various countries was complicated, and the entry-exit management of the Austrian government was strict. Considering the safety of the participants and to facilitate the input from more authors in the meeting while achieving a professional communication effect, the conference committee finally decided to hold the 11th International Conference on Environmental Science and Engineering (ICESE 2021) as a virtual conference which is organized by Univercity of Leuven Belgium.The primary goal of the conference is to promote research and developmental activities in Environmental Science and Engineering. A secondary aim is to promote scientific information interchange between researchers, developers, engineers, students, and practitioners working in many different countries. The conference will be held every year to make it an ideal platform for people to share views and experiences in Environmental Science and Engineering, and related areas.All sessions in this virtual conference were presented by Zoom. Many researchers, engineers, academics as well as industrial professionals from all over the world have presented their research results and development activities. Keynote speakers were allocated 40 minutes to deliver their speeches and 5 minutes for discussion. In the oral sessions, each author had 15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for questions and answers. During the question time, the author could use the “Raise Hand” function or “chat” function to ask questions. The ICESE 2021 Conference Chair, Prof. Jan Baeyens of both the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (China) and the KULeuven (Leuven, Belgium), made the Opening Remarks and delivered his keynote lecture on “Solid-liquid separation of particulate slurries”. Additional keynote speeches were delivered by both Prof. Lise Appels from KU Leuven, Belgium concerning “The anaerobic digestion as a key technology in a sustainable economy: current achievements and challenges” and by Prof. Soteris Kalogirou from Cyprus University of Technology (Cyprus) entitled “Status of Renewable Energy Systems in the World” All the three keynote speakers focused on the latest information and most innovative developments in their respective expertise areas on environmental science and engineering. For the oral conference papers, 6 parallel sub-sessions were held with various interesting topics as follows: (i) Ecosystems and Sustainable Development; (ii) Water Resource Management and Wastewater Treatment; (iii) Solid Waste Control and Energy Technology (I); (iv) Solid Waste Control and Energy Technology (II); (v) Air Pollution Control and Environmental Monitoring, and (vi) Human Health and Society.The ICESE 2021 proceedings are a compilation of the peer-reviewed and accepted papers and represent an interesting outcome of the conference where various topics were dealt with in different following main areas: (i) Global environmental change and ecosystems management, (ii) Integrated ecosystems management, (iii) Environmental restoration and ecological engineering, (iv) Habitat reconstruction, (v) Biodiversity conservation, (vi) Health and the Environment, among others.Finally, it is appropriate that we record our thanks to our organizing committees and reviewers for their work in securing a substantial input of papers. We are also indebted to those who served as Keynote Speakers, Conference Chairmen and Session Chairmen. Without their support, the conference could not have been as successful as it was. We also acknowledge the authors who have contributed to this volume, without whose expert inputs, this compilation of proceedings would not have been possible. We would like to thank all the conference participants for their support to ICESE 2021.Prof. Jan BaeyensBeijing University of Chemical Technology, ChinaKULeuven, BelgiumNovember 18, 2021