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PREFACEThe chemical industry repre sen ts a 455-billion-dollar-a-year bus ines s, withproducts ranging from cosmetics, to fuel products, to plastics, to pharmaceuticals,health care products, food additives, and many others. It is diverse and dynamic,with market sectors rapidly expanding, and in turmoil in many parts of the world.Across these varied industry sectors, basic unit operations and equipment areapplied on a daily basis, and indeed although there have been major technologicalinnova tions to processes, many piec es of equipm ent are based upon a foun dation ofengine ering principles develop ed mo re than 50 years ago.T he Handbook of Chemical Processing Equipment has been written as a basicreference for process engineers. It provides practical information on the workingprinciple s and engineering basis for major equ ipme nt com mo nly used throughoutthe chemical processing and allied industries. Although written largely with thechemical engineer in mind, the book s conte nts are general eno ugh, w ith sufficientbackground and principles described, that other manufacturing and processeng ineers will find it useful.Th e handbook is organized into eight chapters. Chapters 1 through 3 deal with heattransfer equipment used in a variety of industry ap plicatio ns ranging from proc essheat excha nge, to evap orative cooling, to drying and solvent recovery applica tions,humidity control, crystallization, and others. Chapters 4 and 5 cover stagewisemass transfer equipment. Spec ifically, Cha pter 4 cover s distillation, and C hapter 5covers classical mass transfer equipment involving absorption, adsorption,extraction, and membrane technologies. Chapter 6 discusses equipment used inmass separation based upon physical or mechanical means. This includes suchequipment topics as sedimentation, centrifugal separation, filtrations methods.Chapter 7 covers mixing equipment and various continuous contacting devicessuch as gas-solids fluidized beds. Finally, Chapter 8 provides the reader with acompendium of short calculation methods for commonly encountered processoperations. The calculation methods are readily set up on a personal computersstandard software spreadsheet.Select references are provided in each chapter for more in-depth coverage of anequipm ent subjec t, including key W eb sites that offer vendor-specific informationand equipment selection criteria. In a number of chapters, sample calculations areprovided to guide the reader through the use of design and scale-up formulas thatare useful in preparing equipment specifications or in establishing preliminarydesigns.Although the author has taken great care to ensure that the information presented inthis volume is accurate, neither he nor th e publisher will endo rse or guarantee anydesigns based upon materials provided herein. The author wishes to thankButterworth-Heinemann Pub lishers for their fine produ ction of this volume.

Nicholas P . CherernisinofJ;Ph.D.

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