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Salt-water purification
BOOK REVIEWS Salt-Water Purification, 2nd ed. By K. S. SPIEGLER, Plenurn, New York, 1977. 189 pp. 519.50. The preface states that this is an introductory book for newcomers to the field of desalting, and points out that statesmen, economists, scientists, and engineers often must make important decisions in this field, and the book's purpose is to provide these newcomers with sufficient background to appreciate the fundamentals involved. This difficult goal is not attained. Much of the information in this booklet is better presented in the literature provided by manufacturers of equipment. No scientist or engineer would gain by a presentation which is far too elementary; at the same time, much of the text is far too sophisticated for one untrained in those disciplines.
When complex, technical questions must be decided upon by nonspecialists, an intimate interplay between the technician and executive must take place. This publication offers evidence (if such were needed) that a perusal of any booklet cannot substitute for any part of that process. H. P. GREGOR
Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry Columbia University New York, New York 10027 Received February 24, 1978; accepted April 5, 1978
value to workers in the held. As a group of papers the two volumes disappoint for the most part, with some honorable exceptions. A disappointingly large fraction of the work and results described in these volumes has been published previously. Many of the papers contain review material, and rehash elementary concepts, repeated by successive authors. The level of some of these contributions is frankly poor and quite a few would never have survived scrutiny by the referees in regular journals. As for their value to workers in the field, it is useful to have many of the leading workers publishing together, and some repetition and republishing is allowable to permit this snapshot of the subject area. While several of the traditional approaches to micellar systems take on a threadbare look in these volumes, the lively innovations are well represented. On the evidence shown here, a temporary moratorium on thermodynamic speculations would seem in order, while sound classical measurements (calorimetry, etc.) would continue. Spectroscopy and light scattering continue to illuminate, even if, as Hartley suggests, the effort put into interpretation lags behind that put into instrumental design at this stage. The flourishing field of chemical reactions in micellar systems is well represented, but the biological aspects of the subject receive less treatment than they deserve at this stage of the subject. Technological and industrial aspects of micellar systems are not strongly represented. The will-o'-the-wisp of tertiary oil recovery has been a stimulus to microemulsion and micelle studies, and it
Micellization, Solubilization and Microemulsions, Volumes I and II. Edited by K. L. MITTAL, Plenum Press, New York, 1977. These two volumes contain the bulk of the papers delivered at the International Symposium on Micellization, Solubilization, and Microemulsions held at Albany, New York, 1976, under the auspices of the ACS. The papers are reproduced directly from typescripts. The two volumes are divided into groups concerned with thermodynamics and kinetics of micellization; micelles in nonaqueous media; reactions and catalysis in aqueous micellar solutions; reactions in nonaqueous media; microemulsions; and two sections of general papers. The arrangement is untidy. For example, one of the more interesting papers on thermodynamics is that of Scriven and co-workers on interfacial tension minima, but it appears in the second general section. Also included in the two volumes are sections based on the discussion of the papers at the meeting, and it is to be hoped that the actual discussion was more lively, extensive, and comprehensive than the odd scraps which appear here. Some of the exchanges are illuminating, but others should have been firmly suppressed by the editor. The world-at-large is rarely interested, for example, in requests for references. The reaction of most readers of these two volumes will be mixed. The sense of a conference is not conveyed, and one must judge the compilation on its merits as a group of papers and on its overall 372 0021-9797/78/0662-0372502.00/0 Copyright © 1978by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, Vol. 66, No. 2, September 1978
When complex, technical questions must be decided upon by nonspecialists, an intimate interplay between the technician and executive must take place. This publication offers evidence (if such were needed) that a perusal of any booklet cannot substitute for any part of that process. H. P. GREGOR
Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry Columbia University New York, New York 10027 Received February 24, 1978; accepted April 5, 1978
value to workers in the held. As a group of papers the two volumes disappoint for the most part, with some honorable exceptions. A disappointingly large fraction of the work and results described in these volumes has been published previously. Many of the papers contain review material, and rehash elementary concepts, repeated by successive authors. The level of some of these contributions is frankly poor and quite a few would never have survived scrutiny by the referees in regular journals. As for their value to workers in the field, it is useful to have many of the leading workers publishing together, and some repetition and republishing is allowable to permit this snapshot of the subject area. While several of the traditional approaches to micellar systems take on a threadbare look in these volumes, the lively innovations are well represented. On the evidence shown here, a temporary moratorium on thermodynamic speculations would seem in order, while sound classical measurements (calorimetry, etc.) would continue. Spectroscopy and light scattering continue to illuminate, even if, as Hartley suggests, the effort put into interpretation lags behind that put into instrumental design at this stage. The flourishing field of chemical reactions in micellar systems is well represented, but the biological aspects of the subject receive less treatment than they deserve at this stage of the subject. Technological and industrial aspects of micellar systems are not strongly represented. The will-o'-the-wisp of tertiary oil recovery has been a stimulus to microemulsion and micelle studies, and it
Micellization, Solubilization and Microemulsions, Volumes I and II. Edited by K. L. MITTAL, Plenum Press, New York, 1977. These two volumes contain the bulk of the papers delivered at the International Symposium on Micellization, Solubilization, and Microemulsions held at Albany, New York, 1976, under the auspices of the ACS. The papers are reproduced directly from typescripts. The two volumes are divided into groups concerned with thermodynamics and kinetics of micellization; micelles in nonaqueous media; reactions and catalysis in aqueous micellar solutions; reactions in nonaqueous media; microemulsions; and two sections of general papers. The arrangement is untidy. For example, one of the more interesting papers on thermodynamics is that of Scriven and co-workers on interfacial tension minima, but it appears in the second general section. Also included in the two volumes are sections based on the discussion of the papers at the meeting, and it is to be hoped that the actual discussion was more lively, extensive, and comprehensive than the odd scraps which appear here. Some of the exchanges are illuminating, but others should have been firmly suppressed by the editor. The world-at-large is rarely interested, for example, in requests for references. The reaction of most readers of these two volumes will be mixed. The sense of a conference is not conveyed, and one must judge the compilation on its merits as a group of papers and on its overall 372 0021-9797/78/0662-0372502.00/0 Copyright © 1978by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, Vol. 66, No. 2, September 1978