Chemical Reaction Engineering, 2nd Edition [Hardcover]

Octave Levenspiel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471530166 | ISBN-13: 978-0471530169 | Publication Date: June 30, 1972 | Edition: 2

An improved and simplified edition of this classic introduction to the principles of reactor design for chemical reactions of all types—homogeneous, catalytic, biochemical, gas, solid, extractive, etc. Adds new material on systems of deactivating catalysts, flow modeling and diagnosis of the ills of operating equipment, and new simple design procedures for packed bed and fluidized bed reactors.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

An improved and simplified edition of this classic introduction to the principles of reactor design for chemical reactions of all types--homogeneous, catalytic, biochemical, gas, solid, extractive, etc. Adds new material on systems of deactivating catalysts, flow modeling and diagnosis of the ills of operating equipment, and new simple design procedures for packed bed and fluidized bed reactors.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 600 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (June 30, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471530166
• ISBN-13: 978-0471530169
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #932,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book at higher level, June 28, 2000

By 

Vinay Medhekar (Plainsboro NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition (Hardcover)

I used this book as a textbook in my undergraduate. In an undergraduate study, it is necessary to have new concepts explained to you in a unified manner so that ones sees where all the chemical engineering subjects are heading to. Chemical reaction engineering (CRE) basically deals with energy and material balance applied to chemical reactors to achieve a given purpose. The book tells you all the fundamentals about the chemical reaction engineering, the underlying principles but fails to draw this message straight that CRE is nothing but application of energy and material balance. And at undergraduate level, I could not draw this inference on my own and learned it in the graduate class when I took the advanced level course. The book also does not deal with the modern tools of solving reactor design problems with computers. We used Fogler's text book for first few classes in Graduate school. I would recommend this book which could be used as an undergraduate as well as graduate text/reference book. If you need to go to the earlier work and want to pursue research in this field, then Levenspiel is good as it has some original work references ( I believe this is an old book on CRE). Once you have the feel for the subject than the use of this book is undisputed. But if you are using this book to study CRE first time then I would recommend you use some good text book.

Additional comments 6 years later: I am currently using this books to solve some real industry problems and it has become clear to me how good this book is. Though I stick to my earlier comments which were written when I was fresh in to my graduate school for two reasons: how I felt about this book in my undergrad class and how much I learned from Fogler in Graduate level class. But Levenspiel does good justice to all the concepts in chemical reaction engineering and would definitely recommend it as a reference book. It provides many ways to analyze a chemical data and interpret it to determine the kinetics.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A decent undergraduate book, June 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition (Hardcover)

CRE is not a bad book. The author does a good job of explaining reactor design fundamentals, from simple kinetic models to complex reactor systems involving heat/material transfer or multiple reaction contents. He lays the groundwork well early on be using simple, clear examples. There are numerous typos (mostly in the text, though, not the problems. The text itself is in large and legible type. In addition, the book is not overcrowded-like a lot of life science books-with meaningless pictures, text, history, etc (but it might take the boredom meter to a new level for some readers). Although not a big deal, Levenspiel uses some language that makes you kinda wonder what planet he came from. Also, the author puts all the variable nomenclature at the beginning of the book, which is really annoying because you have to flip back and forth until you memorize each character variable. Other than that, it should be adequate to get you through the course w/o a great deal of trouble.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful to Student and Practicing Engineer, May 23, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition (Hardcover)

As a student, I found the material difficult and challenging. Later, as a professional, I referred to this book often when faced with tough reactor calculations and difficult kinetic question. Dr. Levenspiel explains everything very well in his examples; the problem sets were nightmarish, but, then, our professor was awful. All in all, the book is highly useful to student and professional alike. I wish that I had had a good instructor, I would have developed a better appreciation the material as a student. Definitely a book for any chemical engineer's library.