Solvent extraction is now a most powerful separation and purification tool in the process industries. It is used commercially in hydrometallurgy (including the nuclear industry) and widely within the chemical industry including organic chemicals, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. That the technique has risen to prominence in only a few decades is undoubtedly due to the vast amount of research and development carried out not only into reagents, their extraction chemistry and performance in a wide variety of systems, applications and process development but also in the development of appropriate equipment for the process without which process development would be impossible. The scientific literature is rich in papers from fundamental solvent extraction studies on basic physical chemistry, co-ordination chemistry, extraction chemistry, chemical kinetics to process development through to the chemical engineering fundamentals and design required to understand the process of solvent extraction and to permit design and engineering of processes and equipment.The investigation in recent years of phenomena such as reversed micelles, microemulsions, liquid membranes and lyotropic liquid crystals still requires further research, as does the continuing search for a direct method of studying the interfacial reactions involved in many solvent extraction systems and direct identification and characterization of the interfacial species. In planning ISEC '93 the Organizing Committee selected as the conference theme "Solvent Extraction in the Process Industries" noting that, while solvent extraction continues to develop improved processing, yields, separations and reduced costs, it was timely to seek to answer the questions such as: How does this technology measure up in today's environmentally aware world? Where should new developments be? and What should the goals be now for workers in both solvent extraction and liquid membranes? The conference aimed to provide answers to these questions.
