R.Turton, R.C.Bailie, W.B.Whiting and J.A.Shaeiwitz Publisher: Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-570565-7 Available: 11/1/97

      We (the authors) believe that there is still really no good book with which to teach design. The majority of Chemical Engineering Design books currently on the market fall into the category of compendiums or encyclopedias of design information. As such, these books do an excellent job of cataloging information and hence are excellent reference materials. However, in teaching design to senior chemical engineering students, we have found that much of the philosophy of the design process is missing from these books. The majority of the remaining design books can be categorized as containing anecdotal information. Again, such books provide very valuable background information on real processes and are excellent reference books but do not provide the philosophy and structure required for a text book.

      The purpose of this book is to bridge the gap between the chemical engineering undergraduate and the practicing engineer. Although only a small fraction of B.S.Ch.E.'s will become process design engineers, all are likely to be involved in design as defined by ABET or, indeed, by the typical ChE design faculty. We focus on those aspects of design that are most relevant to chemical engineers across the broad array of job assignments. For example, any ChE working as a plant engineer will need to analyze a process as it is operating currently, not just as it was designed to operate. This crucial area of performance analysis (Section 3) is almost completely absent from other design texts. Similarly, ChE's in plant, process, project, research, regulatory, or sales engineering need to be able to analyze the technical (Section 2) and economic (Section 1) aspects of flowsheets (Section 0), as well as to modify and to create new flowsheets (Section 4). Our approach then is more systems oriented than that of other texts. Finally, we introduce the student to aspects of the engineering profession (Section 5). Ethics, safety and health, and written and oral communications are all treated in this section.

      We guide the student through the design process in stages. Each stage represents a section of our book: