- Email: [email protected]
Fluidization
486
Book Reviews
as it does some familiarity with the other related works noted. An important book remains to be written about the post-industrial future, and how it will differ from our industrial present. We now know how rural, agricultural pre-industrial society differed from our urban industrial world. We do not yet understand how different the postindustrial world of the next century will be. Regrettably, Future Worlds offers little insight into the nature o f that world, or o f the decisions that must be made to make it desirable. We must therefore continue to await the work that will usefully delineate that future. Ren6 D. Zentner Associate Dean University o f Houston Law Center Houston, Texas 77004
Fluidization (1980). John R. Grace and John M.
Matsen, eds. Plenum Press, New York (U.S. $69.50). This book is a compilation of the papers presented at the International Fluidization Conference held at Henniker, NH, from August 3-8, 1980. The Conference itself is the fifth in a series of International Congresses on the subject of fluidization. In keeping with its international nature, the series has been held in different countries and invited international participation. The Henniker Conference itself featured papers from seventeen countries and was broadly representative of the worldwide activity in the field o f fluidization. Including the indexes, the book is over 600 pages long at a price of a little over ten cents per page. The sixty research papers have been refereed by nearly a hundred experts, which should ensure a reasonable minimum standard. The so-called camera-ready format has been used to publish the volume quickly, but, surprisingly, without serious detriment to the uniformity of the type-
script on the pages. The papers are not grouped according to subdivision in the subject matter (except for the separation o f the three invited review papers) and this does make it a little difficult for the uninitiated to "home in" on their specific topic o f interest, although the subject index does help in this respect. The papers, as would be expected, cover a wide range of topics of interest in fluidization. An invited review describes the history of development o f fluidized solids technology at one industrial organization (Exxon) and its first commercial application to the catalytic cracking of oil. One of the significant potential developments will be the commercial use of this technology in the combustion of coal in an environmentally acceptable manner. This aspect is obviously o f most interest to the readers of this journal. Since there have been a number of conferences devoted just to this topic, it is not the subject of too many papers here. There are only two papers that studied the combustion o f coal and emissions from such combustion and the experiments were done in fairly small laboratory size fluidized beds. Interestingly, both studied the potential reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions achievable by reaction with char. There are no papers on emissions of sulfur oxides from coal and their abatement. These comments are not meant to be critical but to alert the potential reader whose main interest is in environmental protection. The rest of the papers cover several aspects of fluidization. These include particle mixing, attrition and entrainment, gas mixing, and heat transfer between solids and gas, as well as between the fluidized bed and internals. Both experimental and theoretical studies are reported on. There is no doubt that the sum total of papers in the book is of value to the researcher in the field as well as to those that would have the responsibility for design of fluidized beds. C. R. Krishna
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, New York 11973
Book Reviews
as it does some familiarity with the other related works noted. An important book remains to be written about the post-industrial future, and how it will differ from our industrial present. We now know how rural, agricultural pre-industrial society differed from our urban industrial world. We do not yet understand how different the postindustrial world of the next century will be. Regrettably, Future Worlds offers little insight into the nature o f that world, or o f the decisions that must be made to make it desirable. We must therefore continue to await the work that will usefully delineate that future. Ren6 D. Zentner Associate Dean University o f Houston Law Center Houston, Texas 77004
Fluidization (1980). John R. Grace and John M.
Matsen, eds. Plenum Press, New York (U.S. $69.50). This book is a compilation of the papers presented at the International Fluidization Conference held at Henniker, NH, from August 3-8, 1980. The Conference itself is the fifth in a series of International Congresses on the subject of fluidization. In keeping with its international nature, the series has been held in different countries and invited international participation. The Henniker Conference itself featured papers from seventeen countries and was broadly representative of the worldwide activity in the field o f fluidization. Including the indexes, the book is over 600 pages long at a price of a little over ten cents per page. The sixty research papers have been refereed by nearly a hundred experts, which should ensure a reasonable minimum standard. The so-called camera-ready format has been used to publish the volume quickly, but, surprisingly, without serious detriment to the uniformity of the type-
script on the pages. The papers are not grouped according to subdivision in the subject matter (except for the separation o f the three invited review papers) and this does make it a little difficult for the uninitiated to "home in" on their specific topic o f interest, although the subject index does help in this respect. The papers, as would be expected, cover a wide range of topics of interest in fluidization. An invited review describes the history of development o f fluidized solids technology at one industrial organization (Exxon) and its first commercial application to the catalytic cracking of oil. One of the significant potential developments will be the commercial use of this technology in the combustion of coal in an environmentally acceptable manner. This aspect is obviously o f most interest to the readers of this journal. Since there have been a number of conferences devoted just to this topic, it is not the subject of too many papers here. There are only two papers that studied the combustion o f coal and emissions from such combustion and the experiments were done in fairly small laboratory size fluidized beds. Interestingly, both studied the potential reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions achievable by reaction with char. There are no papers on emissions of sulfur oxides from coal and their abatement. These comments are not meant to be critical but to alert the potential reader whose main interest is in environmental protection. The rest of the papers cover several aspects of fluidization. These include particle mixing, attrition and entrainment, gas mixing, and heat transfer between solids and gas, as well as between the fluidized bed and internals. Both experimental and theoretical studies are reported on. There is no doubt that the sum total of papers in the book is of value to the researcher in the field as well as to those that would have the responsibility for design of fluidized beds. C. R. Krishna
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, New York 11973