Customer Reviews

Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

We didn't use this book at the University of Texas. Even so, it was worth every minute I spent reading it instead of our textbook. It's just that much better than anything else in the curriculum.

Thank you so much! My textbook came earlier than expected and was in great condition. I'm very pleased with my decision to buy!

This is a great text on chemical reaction kinetics and I wish I would have had it before I took my PE exam. I am still waiting on results, I am confident I passed but struggled with 4-5 kinetics questions that this text would have been very helpful on. Even though I dont do reaction kinetics in my day to day job its a great technical reference.

This book is gokay for introduction of Chemical Reactors and all that. However, I would highly recommend that you purchase a used one. It just not worth buying a new copy.

We used this book in the Chemical Engineering department at Tennessee Tech. "Uncle Octave" (I'm still trying to prove that we're related) has an excellent book here, and I commend any university who selects this book for their kinetics class. If you didn't 'get' kinetics, maybe you should try his text.

I used this book as a reference for my reactor engineering class. Though it was easily read I was disappointed that the book lacked a lot of computer problems and especially lacked coverage in energy balances

My focus in using this book was to characterize a very complex heterogeneous (fluid-particle) system. Couldn't have done it without old Octave. Thanks, man, I feel I know you.