Editorial Afterword to the Special Issue

摘要：In order to greet the 36th International Conference on Solution Chemistry (36th ICSC) held in Xining, Qinghai, and organized by Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the special issue on Solution Chemistry was applied for and approved by the National Publication Administration of China. I’d like to start this afterword by thanking the editorial office for giving me the opportunity to read such 10 excellent papers involved in the special issue. The papers cover the abundant content, including many branches of solution chemistry, such as stable and metastable phase equilibria in the multicomponent salt-water system, solution structure,applied solution chemistry and so on. The first two papers of themare special contributing manuscripts as the “Study Highlights” section of the issue. In my view, this issue reflects many of the significant progresses and the latest results that have taken place in the solution chemistry field in the last decade.In particular, the Li salt sequences for 20 brines in the hexa-component system Li^+, Na^+, K^+, Mg^2+/Cl -, SO4^2-,-H2O during the isothermal evaporation at 298 K have been predicted by a thermodynamic model proposed in 2003. The predicted results indicate that the first crystallized Li salt will be varied with composition;Li2SO4 ·H2O will firstly appears in the brines of magnesium sulfate subtype, while Li2SO4 ·K2SO4 or 2Li2SO4Na2SO4 ·K2SO4 will emerge in sodium sulfate subtype and magnesium sulfate subtype with lower Mg/Li composition. These information extend our knowledge of Li chemistry and will provide some helpful suggests to solar pond technology of Li-brine process.