Abstract
THE title on the cover of this excellent book is a very modest one, and gives little indication of the wealth of information and instruction to be found within. The objective of the book is the development of concise and logical methods by which complex industrial chemical problems may be solved from fundamental scientific principles. Its study is intended not to replace but to supplement a course in physical chemistry, and to prepare the student for advanced courses in chemical engineering. The first nine chapters of Part 1 deal with the more ideal low-pressure system in which simple algebraic methods can be used, and the last five chapters treat non-ideal cases by more general and complicated methods, involving considerable use of the calculus. The first four chapters deal with weights and compositions, stoichiometry, ideal behaviour of gases, and vaporization and condensation respectively. Thermo-physics and thermo-chemistry are the subjects of the next two chapters, which are followed by chapters on industrial reactions, fuels, weight and heat balances of combustion, and chemical and metallurgical processes. A detailed analysis is made, for example, of the chamber acid process and of a blast furnace. Part 2 of the book deals with entropy, free energy, and the other thermodynamic potentials, and their application to the study of chemical equilibria. Here the method of treatment is most helpful to the industrial chemist who desires to make use of all the assistance thermodynamics can give but who lacks the technique.
Industrial Chemical Calculations:
the Application of Physico-Chemical Principles and Data to Problems of Industry. By Prof. O. A. HougenProf. K. M. Watson. Second edition. Pp. ix + 487. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1936.) 22s. 6d. net.
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T., R. Chemistry. Nature 139, 457 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139457c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139457c0