10 replies to this topic

[Allan Hugo]

Greetings!
 

If you were given 5 chemical engineering books to keep what will be these books?

You can give us the reasons why.

 

Mine will be:

 

1. Perr's Chemical Engineer's Handbook - the classic bible of chemical engineering profession
2. The Merck Index - a great book to have that deals with significant chemical information

3. Handbook of Chemical Engineering Calculations - just need to be always refreshed with calculations procedures

4. Rules of Thumb for Chemical Engineers - has practical guidelines that are easily applicable

5. Chemical Technician's Ready Reference Handbook - lots of good content that will be useful in chemical industry

 

How about yours? Can you share your list and the reasons?

Thank you very much.

 

[kkala]

<p>Selection depends on your job and what books you are acquainted with, mine could be</p>
<p>1. Perry's Chemical Engineers' handbook, if possible with the CD. A lot of information concentrated in a volume.</p>
<p>2. Coulson and Richardson's Chemical Engineering Vol 6, An introduction to Chemical Engineering Design. Just for this introduction.</p>
<p>3. Plant Design and Economics for Chemical Engineers by Peters and Timmerhaus. Better to be familiar with the subject.<br />
4. McCabe and Smith's Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering. Perry's handbook may not be clear enough to understand an unknown subject.</p>
<p>5. David Himmelblau's Basic Principles and Calculations in Chemical Engineering, taking new essence as these principles are looked into again and again as time advances.</p>
<p>Books specialized in your job may be necessary in addition.</p>
<p>There may be more modern books on above subjects not known to me, which can substitute the above. It is important for the book to be easily understood (old books can be better in this, but it is not general).</p>
<p>Properties of substances can be now traced in the Web, so a book on them may not have first priority (e.g. Properties of gases and liquids) - Perry also deals with it.</p>

Edited by kkala, 14 February 2013 - 07:51 AM.

[garyfo]

I work for a water utility and I have:

 

1.  Perry's 7th edition

2.  ChE Referfence Manual for the PE Exam (great, quick reference guide many rules of thumb)

3.  Elementray Prinicples of Chemical Processes (Felder-Rousseau)

4.  Crane Technical Paper #410 (good for nomographs and quick pipe references)

5.  Levenspiel- Chemical Reaction Engineering

 

Those are my top 5, but I have about ten total

[ankur2061]

Allan,

 

The book collection would also depend on the specific area related to chemical engineering such as oil & gas, petroleum refining, petrochemicals, power generation, water treatment, pharmaceuticals, chemical process equipment etc. For example if you are a chemical engineer working in the upstream and midstream oil & gas sector the GPSA Engineering Databook would be sitting at the top of the recommended list of books. I would recommend you to have a look at the blog entry related to a list of books useful to chemical engineers:

 

http://www.cheresour...gn-engineering/

 

Regards,

Ankur.

[icingrock]

I have Pump Characteristics and Applications, Second Edition since I deal with pump stuffs it's a decent book.

Distillation Operations/Design are must for me also.

 

I am using Heat Exchanger Equipment Field Manual: Common Operating Problems and Practical Solutions which is recently published but it's a good book.

 

Handbook of Chemical Engineering Calculations I use.

Edited by icingrock, 15 February 2013 - 12:35 AM.

[Allan Hugo]

Thank you for all your responses. Ankur thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I think we can still have more list of books from responses here and later we can probably combine the thread or something. Keep them coming if you have your own list. Thank you.

[Nasiruddin]

My list of preference is

 

1. Perry's 7th edition

2. Surface Production operation Vol1. and Vol2. by Ken Arnold and Maurice Stewart

3. Plant Design and Economics for Chemical Engineers by Peters and Timmerhaus

4. Chemical Engineering vol. 6, by Coulson and Richardson

5. Rules of Thumb for Chemical Engineers

 

Thanks

[Allan Hugo]

Thank you for the contribution.

There will be a new volume of Surface Production Operation series (Volume 3: Facility Piping and Pipeline Systems) this June 2013. You can pre-order it already though. I am also posting this info on my website for everyone's benefit.

 

Keep the list going.

[kkala]

One additional remark. I have tried some books from India and found them very good. They are cheap, in clear English and use metric units. Having stored my books in three different places and having direct access only to one, I cannot report specific examples of them; except for old "Stoichiometry" by Bhatt and Vora (Tata McGraw-Hill, 1976), still usefull to me as an alternative to Himmelblau's Basic Principles and Calculations.

I remember a (two volume) thick book on Chemical Engineering / Unit Operations by a Professor (in Mumbay?) and an book on heat exchangers by Gupta. Classical Chemical Engineering books (e.g. Kern's Process heat transfer) have been also republished in India.

Developing countries promote Chemical Engineering and may develop their own processes in the future, if not done already. Their  books on Chemical Engineering are worthy of investigation (particularly by young colleagues). Advantage of India is the English language.

[thorium90]

Hey, I found those books from india very good too. Got to read some from my indian friends. Unfortunately its very hard to get them outside of india.

[kkala]

You could trace them through <http://www.bookfinder.com/>, <http://www.bookfinder4u.com/>, etc. But read specific reviews first, as usual in such cases there are also failures.