Customer Reviews

Distillation Troubleshooting

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Henry Kister is an industry icon and does the Lord's work by cataloging and reporting the Hydrocarbon Processing Industry's process design issues. This book is a fine effort presenting concise summaries myriad Distillation-related gotcha's, but falls short of his previous must-have titles.

In the preface Kister reminds us of at least one human frailty: failing to learn from the past. In these pages he provides a tool to help. Organized by topic (e.g. CONDENSERS THAT DID NOT WORK, or TROUBLESHOOTING DISTILLATION SIMULATIONS, etc.) the thick volume presents case after case of things that went wrong - and how they were fixed. Each scenario is approximately 1.5 pages long and many include sketches and/or photographs. The cases are structued by background, problem, other info, and solution. Often a process engineering "Moral" is included.

250 of the 713 pages are a "Database" of published case histories. Rather, this is a listing of publications spanning 50 years. Though impressive, and arguably very useful, the database should have been included on a CD ROM in any searchable format. Let's hope that is how the author uses it.

I found reading the book a good review of design items that can be overlooked. Still, this is not the required reading of "Distillation Operation" and "Distillation Design" both of which Kister also wrote in the early 1990's. Distillation Troubleshooting is a compendium of problems that likely would have been avoided had the earlier two books been studiously followed.

This book is useful tool book which introduce most of distillation principles and practial reference information. Although it is not deepful in basic distillation concepts. Such as column pinching and invariant zone in equilium curve. I suggest that new man can refer "Unit operation in chemical engineering" of Warren L. McCabe in this book's reading.I am new chemical process engineer in caol tar distillation plant. This book is nice book for me.

Please, i need you have contact with me, beacuse i do not recieve the book at this date (14/05/07). You must give an explanation for this problem.