Customer Reviews

Diffusion: Mass Transfer in Fluid Systems (Cambridge Series in Chemical Engineering)

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

 

 

This is an excellent book to learn the basics of Separation Processes. Cussler managed to explain Chemical Engineering concepts in a very easy way to understand by students. I was lucky to get him as my lecturer several years ago to learn Separation processes.

I feel that this is an excellent book for any student taking their first mass transport and separations course. This is the only science/engineering text book I have ever owned that I actually enjoyed reading. Professor Cussler is a very enthusiastic and brilliant expert on the subject (I am a student in his department, and was lucky enough to have him guest lecture for us) and it really shows in his writing style in this book.

This book manages to present the subject matter clearly starting from the basics and then logically and clearly building up to much more complex material, all while Professor Cussler walks you through the reasons why he is taking the steps he is, and how these steps are justified. This book is very frank and enthusiastic when presenting material (Professor Cussler makes sure to let you know if he is skipping steps, or what steps are common sources of confusion and to pay attention to these steps).

The third edition also separates the sections on differential and staged distillation into two stand-alone chapters, and also incorporates more examples to relate the topics of this book to medicine and biology, helping to broaden the appeal of this book.

That being said, there are still some improvements this book could make for the next revision (not likely to come for a while since the 3rd edition was just released this year). There are some typos/mislabels scattered about the text, but nothing so major as to make the understanding the material impossible. All the typos are pretty minor and would be easily sorted out through a quick comparison to class notes or reading the text as Professor Cussler explains what he is doing. Furthermore, there are also several problems that have answers listed that aren't "exactly" right, meaning they appear to have been rounded off too much.

I'm one of Cussler's students at Minnesota. This book is but a mere accessory to CHEN8301: Physical Rate Processes, the graduate course that we take here, and I wish I could share that magical experience with everyone. It really puts this text into perspective as not a go-to handbook, but rather a map for a foray into the world of mass transfer led by one of its greatest navigators. Nevertheless, this text as-read is much less inspiring than the author delivering it in the flesh, so I guess I have high expectations to even give the map 4 stars.

As a theory text, it's often lacking. But, Cussler always preaches the message that theory is only useful if it can be practically applied to industrial process and experiment. Nothing echoes that message louder than Diffusion. So if you came to hear the tale of theory, take the 5 hour trip down the road to Madison and pick up BSL.

Book arrived on time and in condition as promised. lots of hand written notes and hilighting in the book, but I dont mind it. it helps me out!

I encountered Cussler's book after I worked through BSL, after I worked through Deen. I was fortunate to grasp the mathematics required to wrestle through those two tomes, but always had difficulty putting the bigger picture together for applications. The Cussler text opened my eyes, and made me fall in love with the subject. It is now the only transport text I reference regularly, and it is the first place I stop when I want to relearn an old subject. I was an advanced student when I read it, but highly recommend it to anybody wishing to strengthen their understanding of the subject.

I would not use it as an introductory text for third/fourth year chemical engineering undergrads. I would jump at the opportunity to teach from it at an intermediate level, though. The focus on applications and intuition over rote mathematics is in-line with the 'real world' of mass transport, which was lost on me when I was spending hours upon hours working the math of BSL and Deen.

This book is too messy. Lots of typos and the problems are far away from the theory in chapters. Moreover, the problems are ill-formulated so often it is impossible to understand which quantity is required to find.

I think this book is really a good book for students, and for people who want to refresh their understandings about diffusion.
I am now interested in diffusion in polymer/solvents solution during coated film is being dried. The drying mechanism is complicated as this is a moving boundary problem, accompanying multi-component diffusion in the coated layer and solvents evaporation from the surface.
This book contains little topics relating to the above, but still I felt the necessity of returning to fundamentals, and read this book.
The writing style of this book is very frank, viz. the author expresses his value judgments and opinions based on his experiences. If I were young, I would like to take his lessons using this book.
I couldn't understand why ratings hear are so much spreading.

It is a very nice book explaining very well the basics of diffusion. But it also covers the more specialized diffusion situations.

This is definitely not a book for those who really wants to learn mass transfer and unit operations. The author only skims through the important concepts and the examples are either over simplified or irrelevant. The example questions are full of mistakes and the answers provided are wrong. For the studious chemical engineering student who is interested to understand the important concepts of mass transfer, stay away from this book. This book totally mess me up. Now I am using Transport Processes by Geankoplis, which is in my opinion, more direct and conventional, and easy to understand than Cussler, who writes the textbook like a story book!! The Mass Transfer section in the book Transport Phenomena by Bird also do better justice to this subject even though it is more suited for graduate students. My advice: Don't use this book if you want to grasp unit operations well.

I would strongly discourge using this book to try and learn mass transfer. We used this book in Purdue's mass transfer course and the classmates I spoke with agreed -- this book was extremely confusing and took a "hand wave" approach when solving the difficult mathematics. A much better book is Transport Phenomena by Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot.