This first volume of Chemical Engineering Research collects the unedited research project reports written by 4th year undergraduates (Class of 2019) of the M.Eng. course on Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London.

The research project spans for one term (Autumn) during the last year of the career and has an emphasis on independence, ability to plan and pursue original project work for an extended period, to produce a high quality report, and to present the work to an audience using appropriate visual aids. Students are also expected to produce a literature survey and to place their work in the context of prior art. The papers presented showcase the diversity and depth of some of the research streams in the department, but obviously only touch on a small number of research groups and interests. For a full description of the research at the department, the reader is referred to the departmental website¹.

The papers presented are in no particular order and they are identified by a manuscript number. Some papers refer to appendixes and/or supplementary information which are too lengthy to include. These files are available directly from the supervisors (see supervisor index at the end of the book). Some of the reports are missing, as they have been embargoed waiting for publication in peer-reviewed journals and or patent applications. A few reports correspond to industrial internships, called LINK projects, currently done at Shell.

Cover figure corresponds to an SEM image of a colloidal silica film (taken from the work of Carlos Sheppard and Leonardo Giustiniani, manuscript 49).