Customer Reviews

Chemical Fate and Transport in the Environment, Second Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a reasonably priced textbook for advanced undergrad & grads studying the environmental sciences in Engineering, Hydrology, and Chemistry. Environmental consultants in the private sector could also employ this textbook as a reference. Harry Hemond (of MIT) and Liz Fechner-Levy (consultant in Bethesda, MD) deliver a quantitative treatment of processes. Battle-tested at MIT for many years, this volume features time-saving exercises at the end of each chapter and an accompanying solutions manual.

While there is no doubt that the author is highly proficient in the subject matter the book was a difficult read. Terms and theories were explained clearly however this is not an introductory level chemistry book. This book is written for chemical or environmental engineering students. Illustrations and tables are also inserted at points where you are engrossed in some pretty heady material so it gave the impression of jumping around. I say this b/c illustrations and tables had a lot of information included. The formulas were high level mathematical computations that I found bewildering. I am not Einstein but I also have 10 years of in the trenches environmental chemistry and field management. There were excellent problems to work at the end of each chapter but the answers were not to be found in the book. I have no idea if I worked the problems correctly which defeats the point of working them in the first place. I would not recommend this book as a "beginner level" chemistry book. This is more appropriate for a graduate school level which may have been the intended audience. If you are looking for a book packed with theory and formulas then this is the book for you. I had expected a book that was a little more general in nature.

Overall I would say this is a well written and useful text. I used this text for a Graduate Level Civil Engineering class while working on my Masters. This is a good introductory text for understanding the basic concepts of advective and fickian transport of contaminants of concern. The concepts presented can be applied to pretty much any chemical. The text covers basic concepts, chemical distribution of phases, mechanisms responsible for physical transport, air-water exchange modeling, Redox reactions, dissolved oxygen modeling,determining partitioning coefficients among phases, transport within the subsurface enviornmental and processess within the atmosphere. I found that the section on Bio Accumlation Factor (BAF), Bio Concentration Factor (BCF), and determining the increasing concentration within each trophic level within the food chain of the system to be weak. Each chapter within the text is full of problem sets but there is no solution guide which would be helpful. I would recommend this text, however, I would also supplement certain sections with additional reading as required.

Great resource for someone, like myself, who wants to understand environmental chemistry - but has no background in the subject. It is designed for the college student who is studying another major other than Earth Science. However, it is not light on the science! There is a cohesive intent in the way the concepts are presented. They are unraveled in an intuitive way, as apposed to the direct mathematical models that would plug into the minutia of overall Earth and Atmospheric Science. This book is basically a college course (or two) in and of itself. I'm using it to model a 10 acre lake in Pine Lake Georgia 30072. By working with the local EPD and their Field Monitoring Unit, we can measure deficiencies and suggest improvements to city planners. Understanding the transmission of gases and chemicals in and out of a body of water is key to function in the larger watershed and localized environmental health.

Book arrived in Great condition. The description of the condition of the book was accurate.

Full disclosure: I am a student of the author. This is a graduate level intro textbook that braids together the several disciplines of environmental engineering, e.g. chemistry, hydrology, and biology, and gives an accessible quantitative treatment of the processes involved. I find this text generally useful for solving problems in environmental engineering because the central issues have been carefully distilled and the most relevant equations are easy to find and apply. This book is not a replacement for textbooks in chemistry or hydrology, but it ties everything together well for the environmental engineer...when you want to cut straight to the crux of the matter its the book you'll reach for first.