Customer Reviews

Water Chemistry

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

 

 

This book includes the properties of water, introduction to and application of thermodynamics and kinetics, acid-base chemistry, complexation chemistry, precipitation and dissolution, and redox chemistry in water.

The book is not recommended for an undergraduate level, it is hard to follow for a beginner. It is fairly old, published 1980, so it doesn't have current topics in environmental water chemistry, but it does cover the basics which are important to know.

The problems at the end of each chapter are fairly difficult.

I used this book as an alternate text for a graduate level course in chemical hydrogeology. This was by far the best textbook I used. The class text and most others that I used were qualitative texts. This book presents a quantitative approach to equilibrium chemistry. This definately helped clear up several topics and is full of plenty of examples. At the end of the chapters there are suggestions for additional reading and many practice problems. The authors present cchemical kinetics, equilibrium, acid-base reactions, coordination chemistry, precipitation and dissolution, and redox reactions. This book is definately helpful as it goes through many problems step-by-step and is very instructive.

While the level of difficulty compared to other class textbooks is higher, it provides a real world examples of problems environmental engineers find in their field. This book will suit better as a reference book for undergraduate and a textbook for graduate students, it goes beyond the classic theoretical solutions. One of the authors is a professor in a very good university in California. You may find this fact very important because many of the theories, formulas and conclusions that are being used in the industry are contained in this book, and have been derived from doctoral work by Ph.D. candidates at that University. You may want to keep this book as a reference after you have finished your graduate school. Every environmental engineer or scientists must have a copy of this book. Believe me! We used this book at the LMU Graduate Program.

This book is not light reading. It presumes that the reader is chemically and mathematically competent. However that being said, the development of concepts and techniques is clear and extremely well written. Its use of graphical techniques to solve chemical problems is powerful and outstanding, especially in this age of computers. I have been a professional water treater and researcher for as long as this book has been around, and I've never found anything better, BUY IT. READ IT!

This book is very comprehesive and easy to understand. I could not have survived Water Chemistry with out it. The example problems are given in a step by step form making it easy to follow and understand. My class assigned book was Water Chemistry by Mark Benjamin which was impossible to follow and/or comprehend. This book saved my life. A must have for any Water Chemistry class.