194

reflects his experience in teaching both senior courses in distillation and also in con- tinuing education courses. Indeed the book has a strong industrial ambience.

The text begins with a chapter on design objectives and how these may best be obtained by the use of CAD. There follows an extensive chapter on the calculation and pre- diction of vapour-liquid equilibria. This in- cludes flash calculations and the use of pseudocomponents for dealing with multicom- ponent mixtures. The next three chapters cover binary distillation, multicomponent dis- tillation and batch distillation. After a brief review of fundamentals the emphasis is on the use of computer methods for carrying out rigorous designs. In batch distillation, in par- ticular, one sees, more clearly perhaps than anywhere else, the revolution that has come about through the ability to use computer methods to solve problems that would hith- erto have been thought of as near impossible.

Chapter 6 deals with distillation systems and emphasizes the importance of designing the system and not just the column. Chapter 7 on column internals might more logically have come before Chapter 6 but it is a good review of the design of the separating devices themselves. This is a topic where iteration is less obvious but more necessary than almost anywhere else in the distillation design pro- cess. It is a pity therefore that one has to refer to the Appendix to see this hinted at. Chapter 8 deals with safety and control sys- tems and Chapter 9 with pilot experiments and de-bottlenecking. The chapters of text comprise almost exactly two-thirds of the book. The remaining one-third is taken up by Appendixes, most of which are manuals for four of the EUROCHEM programs, those on vapour-liquid equilibria, separation calcula- tions, batch distillation and internals design. These are interesting to the distillation ex- pert but without the actual programs are of little use to students. One would have thought that anyone who has these EUROCHEM programs would have the man- uals as part of the package. They really add little to the value of the book as a student text.

Altogether this is one of the best practical design books which I have seen on this sub- ject and is to be thoroughly recommended both to teachers and those who wish to

practice more expertly in this area. It is a little disappointing that it does not come with the software necessary to make it really valuable.

D. C. FRESHWATER

Ideal and Incompressible Fluid Dynamics by M. E. O‘Neill and Frank Chorlton; published by Ellis Horwood, Chicester, 1986; 412 pp.; price, &40.00

This book is the first of two volumes which the authors are writing on fluid dynamics. As the name indicates, “Ideal and Incompress- ible Fluid Dynamics” covers what is the more “classical” aspects of the subject. However, it lays the foundation necessary for the under- standing of the companion volume “Viscous and Compressible Fluid Dynamics”.

The vector and tensor mathematics to be used in the text are treated in the first part of the book making it self-contained as regards mathematical techniques.

There are a further seven chapters. These are kinematic of fluids in motion, mechanics of fluid motion, potential flow, the stream function, two dimensional flow, conformal transformation and its applications and, finally, waves. This last chapter treats, essen- tially, just surface waves. As can be seen these are the subjects to be found in any good classical textbook on fluid dynamics and there are many of these books.

What makes this book different is that at the end of each chapter there are numerous problems to test ones understanding of the chapter’s content. For instance, at the end of the first chapter on the mathematical tech- niques there are over 80 problems. I think this is an important recommendation. Too many books today which purport to be for undergraduates lack this essential element of a textbook.

The presentation and literary style make this book a pleasure to read. The price is very reasonable for a book of this quality. It is certainly a book to be recommended to un- dergraduates, and used with the wealth of problems, as a course book.

PETER RICE