Chemical reaction engineering, environmental protection and sustainable development

This paper is based on the lecture delivered at the First South East European Congress of Chemical Engineering (SEECCHE1) held on September 25-28, 2005 in Beograd, Serbia. Time constraints did not permit me to publish it in the proceedings of the conference, and since the topic considered is very much pertinent to the current developments in our profession, it seems appropriate to present it in this special issue of the same journal that carried the papers from that conference. In addition, the paper represents a small tribute to my brother Aleksandar for his dedicated work in emphasizing the importance of fundamentals in chemical engineering education. In this paper an attempt is made to illustrate to the younger generations of chemical and process engineers the importance of reaction engineering and its relevance to societal needs globally. The slides and comments of the talk given at SEECCRE1 are made available on a web site indicated at the end of the paper.