Customer Reviews

Process Design Principles: Synthesis, Analysis, and Evaluation

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

 

 

Covering the main topics in chemical process synthesis an design, this book present a broad view of the state of the art techniques and methods to achieve an optimum design.

With this work, Dr. Seider, et al, have given an invaluable contribution to the teaching of this field, presenting a logical an principle based approach for the "basic plant design", in contrast to the experience based traditional view.

Focusing on the extensive use of commercial process simulators, the book presents an overview of the conceptual basis of process simulation and optimization,but not its mathematical detail, giving the engineer the opportunity to focus on the process instead of focus on the mathematical and computational problem.

As for using this book for design - I would say that it is marginal at best. If you happen to use Aspen and do everything using a process simulator, this book is pretty good. From and economics/costing standpoint, this book doesn't even come close to Peters & Timmerhaus. Does not have much of a discussion on material selection - a definite drawback. It does include a nice appendix on design heuristics that draws from Walas and other sources.

I am a registered Professional Engineer (PE) and also currently studying in the department of Chemical Engineering in one university.

I have to say, if possible, never use ChemCAD or else I will review this book as 5 star.

I used many commercially available software in companies and in schools but have never received any product assistant like ChemCAD.

They refused to answer students questions and even wrote to department "Stop this student contacting us".

And they do not have many resources as other process software, i.e. Aspen etc. And some critical pressures etc are not accurate at all.

This book is really good for process engineers. I don't know if there is a different edition of the one I have but there's little about CHEMCAD, the book is too focused on other simulation softwares and if you don't have one of those; solving some proposed problems gets really difficult and frustating. Packed with heuriustics on process and equipment design.Excellent choice!

This book is a rehash of the same old stuff every other bood on process simulation has. It's heavily biased towards Aspen and Hysys to boot. More information about Chemcad and Pro II would have been very helpful. It would have given the reader a wider view of the discipline.

I was a student of Dr. Seider at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1970's. Reviewing the table of contents for this book, I recognize a lot of the material from courses I took with Dr. Seider at Penn. We studied material in Dr. Seider's class that was later published.

Dr. Seider is a very knowledgeable professor of chemical engineering.

He combined the academic aspects with the industrial field experience, and showed his students how to use the numerical methods to solve chemical engineeing problems.

The authors have used some of the new technologies and software packages to help undergraduate students master this material quicker than we could with the computation tools available in 1974. Sample code is available in the textbook that allows a student to concentrate on the process aspects of plant design, and not spend time writing and debugging computer code.

My own career took me into areas outside of chemical process design.

But the systematic, analytical methods taught by Dr. Seider still help me in resolving power plant performance problems.

C. W. Martin

Senior Engineer

James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant

The ultimate book for process synthesis, that combines the synthesis and design of chemical processes.