Book Reviews

Principles of Colloid and Surface Chemistry Third Edition, Revised and Expanded

by P. C. Hiemennz , R. Rajagopalan

Marcel Dekker, lnc., New York, USA; pp 650; ISBN 0- 8247-9397-8 (HB). Price: $ 65.

How are we influenced by the look and feel of a book in our initial views as to its contents and whether or not we will like it? I think a great deal, but maybe that is the basis of another book.

This book, for me has the size, look, feel and weight to say straight away 'this is a classic text book', a volume that is packed full of information.

On opening the book and making that first scan of the pages that we all seem to do if we are speed-readers, I was not dis- appointed. It confirmed my initial thoughts; it is an excellent textbook on colloid and surface chemistry. But then again so it should be as this is the third edition of the book, the second being ten years ago. In the time period since the second edition there have been many advances in the subject area, especially in instrumen- tation. New chapters on instrumentation, theoretical; experi- mental and applications have been incorporated into this ex- panded edition to make it into an essential textbook for graduates and researchers not only in surface chemistry but also in related disciplines such as chromatography. All the chapters, and there are thirteen of them, are essen- tially self contained and carry well-written introductions. Within the chapters the division of headings and sub- headings are well planned and, as such, they provide an ex- cellent route map for a student or researcher to obtain the in- formation required. However, for me, the jewel in the book is in the vignettes. These take the reader from the theoretical world and outline how the topic of the given section has real- ity. I know that I will not be alone in saying, after reading a vignette, 'I didn't realise that', or 'now I see the significance of that point'. They really do help and I believe help in acting as a glue to make this what it is - an excellent textbook, ex- cellently organised, clearly written and well laid out.

I must also say something about the review questions asked at the end of each chapter. In answering these it certainly made me go back into the chapter and reread points that I didn't fully grasp when it came to answering the questions. But the problems; how I wish I could answer them all! These must be designed for the instructor and the student to work on together. In conclusion, a book that is now on the top shelf in my bookcase, this is reserved for only the best.

Peter Myers

Fuzzy Logic in Chemistry

by D. H. Rouvray, (Ed.)

Academic Press 1997, London, UK. pp 364; ISBN 0-12- 598910-5. Price: s 55.

This must be one of the best titles for any chemistry book and one that will draw the attention of people not associated with chemistry. For those people who gave up chemistry af- ter leaving school, it will emphasise their popular belief that chemistry is a FUZZY subject and it may also make them happy in that they were correct in dropping a subject that to them was FUZZY by nature. Others will be interested to read that the subject of Fuzzy Logic is, or can be, applied to chemistry as opposed to the popular idea that it only has an application in the control of domestic washing machines.

The book is developed from the conference "Are the Con- cepts of Chemistry all Fuzzy?" held in Pitlochry in 1995 and organised by Dr. Edward King and Professor Dennis Rou- vray. The chapters in this book are based on the lectures pre- sented but have since been developed and refereed. As such it is an excellent book of the conference proceedings, but that is all, as I fail to see its target audience. As pointed out by the editor, it is not an introductory book on fuzzy logic, indeed he points to other books on this, and it is neither a textbook on fuzzy logic. I found too big a gap to exist be- tween the introductory books and the content of this book despite two very good chapters on "Uncertainty in Physical Sciences" and an excellent chapter entitled "From Classical to Fuzzy Mathematics". The contribution by Professor Mislow from Princeton Uni- versity addresses the definition of chirality. He outlines how the description of a chemical system can be chiral or achiral and this is based on experimental observations. This two- valued logic that is appropriate for geometrical objects then no longer applies and so it becomes necessary to resort to fuzzy logic. The reason for this is that there are many meas- ures of chirality. Chapter 4 is written by Dr. Amann and deals with the conflict between traditional chemistry and quantum mechanics. In a very well argued introduction he describes the application of fuzzy logic, or fuzzy classical systems in genuine quantum systems. Chapter 5, by Professor Mezey from the University of Sas- katchewan, defines the electron cloud as a fuzzy electron density cloud and develops this into the molecular shape problem. To understand this chapter you really need a good understanding of set theory, as the equations are quite deep. Professor Brickmann from the Technical University of Darmstadt (Chapter 6) relates the problem of molecular rec- ognition to fuzzy logic after first giving an excellent intro-

166 Chromatographia Vol. 48, No. 1/2, July 1998

Book Reviews

duction on the transformations that are used today to trans- form molecular scenarios into ones that we can manipulate with visual control.

Jun Xa (Chapter 7) deals with fuzzy graphs in chemical structure. He explains well the problem associated with the determination of complicated structure from the vast ar- moury of tools the chemist has available. He outlines how some of the structural interpretation is based on "Crisp Rules" whereas others are based on fuzzy rules. So fuzzy graph theory is a mathematical model that contains this fuzzy and crisp system. This chapter leads well into Chap- ter 8 by Ivan Bangor from the Bulgarian Academy of Sci- ences dealing with molecular fuzzy clustering techniques. The last chapter written by Dan-Dumitra Dumitrescu looks at more classical fuzzy systems applied to analytical system. Overall a nice book that can be used as an expanded refer- ence book from the conference, but one that lacks a real tar- get audience.

Peter Myers

Handbook of Process Chromatography

by G. Sofer, L. Hagel, Eds.

Academic Press, London, UK. 1997, 387 pp. ISBN 0-12- 654266-X. Price: s 80

This volume combines two previous texts by the same authors; in turn these originated from teaching courses, pri- vately sponsored by Pharmacia Biotech. By bringing up-to- date and reworking the content of the two original books, the authors have nominally produced a well-rounded handbook describing practical process chromatography as used for the separation of macromolecules. However the contents are se- verely limiting. Although there are very occasional unspeci- fied references to the existence of other matrices and equip- ment, only those trademarked by Pharmacia Biotech are mentioned. Consequently inexperienced readers, the pri- mary target, might assume that no others existed. The addi- tion of a number of examples using competitor's products would have avoided this criticism and removed the suspicion that it is little more than commercial publicity material - in which case it should be provided free of charge!

It begins by stating that first-to-market pressures can often result in the adoption of commercial processes with less than maximum efficiency. The primary objective of this book is then to link together and place in a logical sequence all the necessary steps to minimise development time and to assist in selection of an optimum process There is an emphasis on the need for research chemists to work as closely knit teams with development groups and to bring in process design en- gineers as early as possible. Source materials are thoroughly discussed. Sources are dif- ferentiated into E. coli, yeasts, CHO cells, insect cells, trans- genics, monoclonal antibodies, synthetic oligonucleotides,

gene therapy vectors and plasmids, and biologicals from natural sources. The effect of variations in source material on a given separation are very often overlooked by both re- searchers and developers, and the reader is warned against complacency however well advanced the project; this sec- tion is well up-to-date. Comparative economic data are added to demonstrate that recombinant proteins from trans- genic sources (animal and plant) can be 10-50 times less ex- pensive than those derived from an expensive source such as mammalian cell cultures, but adds the rider that transgenic sources are unlikely to be free from pathogens which then may need additional purification steps. Safety issues are addressed throughout, with specific refer- e n c e to the use of monoclonal antibody as affinity ligands. Monoclonals far outnumber all other categories of biotech- nology products, but the majority are used as diagnostics (in vivo and in vitro) and imaging agents. In examining the dan- ger of unintentional cross reactivity of antibodies with hu- man tissue antigens the USA's Food and Drug Administra- tion (FDA) has ruled against the use of monoclonals as ligands in purification processes and now require such ligands to be phased out. In pointing out that regulatory authorities offer no general rules concerning purification and that each process is accepted on a case-by-case basis, the authors provide a list of minimum requirements, including removal of virus', host cell derived proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and other impurities from final products. An extensive chapter on validation is a must-read-and-absorb section for all biotechnologists. The ISO system does not simply concern production. It is a company-based system and permeates throughout the whole infrastructure and in- cludes all aspects o fR & D and administration. The question of validation is closely linked to safety, exemplified by the recent serious enforcement of regulations on the blood frac- tionation industry in the USA. Supporting these issues is an equally lengthy chapter on cleaning, sanitisation and stor- age. When integrated together they more or less provide a manual of how to operate within a strictly enforced regula- tory environment. Well thought-out chapters on scale-up not only discuss the more obvious straightforward issues but also suggest pro- duction scenarios. These range from 100 g/annum scale up to 1 tonne/annum, thus providing a sense of scale. Econom- ics are then examined on a step-by-step basis, attributing costs to individual parts of the process with a final commen- tary on the cost effect of changing one part of the process and its effect on another. The book is well referenced and indexed. In some senses there is very little new; in another it is an essential text for all biotechnologists working in the protein separations busi- ness. Elimination of the almost complete bias towards one company's products would provide a significantly wider audience.

K. Jones

Chromatographia Vol. 48, No. 1/2, July 1998 167

Book Reviews

Supercritical Fluid Chromatography with Packed Columns Techniques and Applications

K. Anton, C. Berger, Eds. Marcel Dekker, Inc. New York, NY, USA 1997, 472 pp. ISBN 0-8247-0013-9. Price: $165

As in the case of Mark Twain, reports of the death of SFC are an exaggeration. The technique has a wide variety of niche applications, to which the large number of contributors from industry to this book provide ample testimony. SFC on packed columns has a number of advantages over HPLC: rapid diffusion in the mobile phase reduces analysis time; chiral SFC often results in improved enantiomer resolution; preparative SFC is facilitated by the use of the cheap and readily evaporated CO2, and only packed column SFC per- mits adjustment of analytical conditions by simultaneous variation of temperature and of mobile phase density and composition. It follows that SFC on packed columns can re- place many normal phase HPLC applications and comple- ment GPC through oligomer separations. The use of CO2 as mobile phase allows detection by flame ionisation - leading to important applications in the petroleum industry. This book has 15 review chapters by a total of 30 authors, 23 of whom have European addresses - a reflection of the his- torical preference on this side of the Atlantic for packed col- umn SFC, as opposed to SFC on capillary columns. It is par- ticularly pleasing to see, however, the coming together of these two branches of the technique in a seminal account of SFC on packed capillary columns by the doyen of capillary SFC, Milton Lee with his colleague Yufeng Shen. Other chapters on fundamentals are divided into contribu- tions on: general instrumentation by Terry Berger, Francis Vrrillon and Keith Coleman; light scattering detection by Larry Taylor and Klaus Anton and co-workers; the practice

of packed column SFC separation by Monika Johannsen and Gerd Brunner (on solubility), Pat Sandra and colleagues (on the tuning of selectivity column coupling), and Eric Lesel- lier and Alain Tchapla (on the use of organic modifiers in the mobile phase. In enantiomer separation, packed column chromatography with supercritical or enhanced fluidity mo- bile phases is often now the method of choice, and this is fully discussed in chapters by Roger Smith and by Christian Wolf and William Pirkle. Semi-preparative and production scale (up to tonnes!) is covered by Koichi Ute, Pascal Jus- forques and co-workers, and by Peter Lembke. A full range of applications of packed column SFC is described by Olle Gyllenhaal and colleagues (pharmaceuticals), Claire Berger (polymer additives), environmental samples (Andrei Med- vedovici and co-workers). The only significant omission here is, perhaps, a comprehensive discussion of the impor- tant application area of SFC to petroleum and other fossil- fuel mixtures; an ASTM method now employs SFC in the group-type analysis of diesel fuels (described here on a packed capillary column} and SFC is valuable in simulated distillation at much lower temperatures than in GC. The book has a comprehensive general index, and unusually, a compound index which allows targeted use of the many analytical procedures outlined. This welcome and definitive book, taken with another recent account of packed column SFC [1] sets the record straight: this technique is here to stay and has an important part to play in modern chromatographic separation.

D. Bartle

Reference [1] T.A. Berger, "Packed Column SFC", Chromatographia 46,

560 (1997).

168 Chromatographia Vol. 48, No. 1/2, July 1998