The Chemical Age


Book Description

This sweeping history reveals how the use of chemicals has saved lives, destroyed species, and radically changed our planet: “Remarkable . . . highly recommended.” —Choice In The Chemical Age, ecologist Frank A. von Hippel explores humanity’s long and uneasy coexistence with pests, and how the battles to exterminate them have shaped our modern world. He also tells the captivating story of the scientists who waged war on famine and disease with chemistry. Beginning with the potato blight tragedy of the 1840s, which led scientists on an urgent mission to prevent famine using pesticides, von Hippel traces the history of pesticide use to the 1960s, when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring revealed that those same chemicals were insidiously damaging our health and driving species toward extinction. Telling the story in vivid detail, von Hippel showcases the thrills—and complex consequences—of scientific discovery. He describes the creation of chemicals used to kill pests—and people. And, finally, he shows how scientists turned those wartime chemicals on the landscape at a massive scale, prompting the vital environmental movement that continues today.




Re-Engineering the Chemical Processing Plant


Book Description

The first guide to compile current research and frontline developments in the science of process intensification (PI), Re-Engineering the Chemical Processing Plant illustrates the design, integration, and application of PI principles and structures for the development and optimization of chemical and industrial plants. This volume updates professionals on emerging PI equipment and methodologies to promote technological advances and operational efficacy in chemical, biochemical, and engineering environments and presents clear examples illustrating the implementation and application of specific process-intensifying equipment and methods in various commercial arenas.




Shaping the Industrial Century


Book Description

The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century begun in Inventing the Electronic Century. Alfred Chandler argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed. By the end of World War II, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were transformed by the commercializing of new learning, the petrochemical and the antibiotic revolutions. But by the 1970s, chemical science was no longer providing the new learning necessary to commercialize more products, although new directions flourished in the pharmaceutical industries. In the 1980s, major drug companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Schering Plough, commercialized the first biotechnology products, and as the twenty-first century began, the infrastructure of this biotechnology revolution was comparable to that of the second industrial revolution just before World War I and the information revolution of the 1960s. Shaping the Industrial Century is a major contribution to our understanding of the most dynamic industries of the modern era.




What is Life?


Book Description

Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrödinger posed a profound question: 'What is life, and how did it emerge from non-life?' This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology? What could have led the first replicating molecules up such a path? Now, developments in the emerging field of 'systems chemistry' are unlocking the problem. Addy Pross shows how the different kind of stability that operates among replicating molecules results in a tendency for chemical systems to become more complex and acquire the properties of life. Strikingly, he demonstrates that Darwinian evolution is the biological expression of a deeper, well-defined chemical concept: the whole story from replicating molecules to complex life is one continuous process governed by an underlying physical principle. The gulf between biology and the physical sciences is finally becoming bridged. This new edition includes an Epilogue describing developments in the concepts of fundamental forms of stability discussed in the book, and their profound implications. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.




Silent Spring


Book Description

The essential, cornerstone book of modern environmentalism is now offered in a handsome 40th anniversary edition which features a new Introduction by activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new Afterword by Carson biographer Linda Lear.




Caesar's Last Breath


Book Description

The Guardian's Best Science Book of 2017: the fascinating science and history of the air we breathe. It's invisible. It's ever-present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. In Caesar's Last Breath, New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe, and across time to tell the story of the air we breathe, which, it turns out, is also the story of earth and our existence on it. With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds on the Senate floor, but the story of his last breath is still unfolding; in fact, you're probably inhaling some of it now. Of the sextillions of molecules entering or leaving your lungs at this moment, some might well bear traces of Cleopatra's perfumes, German mustard gas, particles exhaled by dinosaurs or emitted by atomic bombs, even remnants of stardust from the universe's creation. Tracing the origins and ingredients of our atmosphere, Kean reveals how the alchemy of air reshaped our continents, steered human progress, powered revolutions, and continues to influence everything we do. Along the way, we'll swim with radioactive pigs, witness the most important chemical reactions humans have discovered, and join the crowd at the Moulin Rouge for some of the crudest performance art of all time. Lively, witty, and filled with the astounding science of ordinary life, Caesar's Last Breath illuminates the science stories swirling around us every second.




Process Safety Calculations


Book Description

Process Safety Calculations is an essential guide for process safety engineers involved in calculating and predicting risks and consequences. The book focuses on calculation procedures based on basic chemistry, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, conservation equations, kinetics and practical models. This book provides helpful calculations to demonstrate compliance with regulations and standards. Standards such as Seveso directive(s)/COMAH, CLP regulation, ATEX directives, PED directives, REACH regulation, OSHA/NIOSH and UK ALARP are covered, along with risk and consequence assessment, stoichiometry, thermodynamics, stress analysis and fluid-dynamics. - Includes realistic engineering models with validation from CFD modeling and/or industry testing - Provides an introduction into basic principles that govern process relationships in modern industry - Helps the reader find and apply the right principles to the specific problem being solved, mitigated or validated




Chemical Engineering


Book Description

'Chemical engineering is the field of applied science that employs physical, chemical, and biological rate processes for the betterment of humanity'. This opening sentence of Chapter 1 has been the underlying paradigm of chemical engineering. Chemical Engineering: An Introduction is designed to enable the student to explore the activities in which a modern chemical engineer is involved by focusing on mass and energy balances in liquid-phase processes. Problems explored include the design of a feedback level controller, membrane separation, hemodialysis, optimal design of a process with chemical reaction and separation, washout in a bioreactor, kinetic and mass transfer limits in a two-phase reactor, and the use of the membrane reactor to overcome equilibrium limits on conversion. Mathematics is employed as a language at the most elementary level. Professor Morton M. Denn incorporates design meaningfully; the design and analysis problems are realistic in format and scope.




Chemical Engineering Design and Analysis


Book Description

The go-to guide to learn the principles and practices of design and analysis in chemical engineering.




Chemical Engineering Explained


Book Description

Written for those less comfortable with science and mathematics, this text introduces the major chemical engineering topics for non-chemical engineers. With a focus on the practical rather than the theoretical, the reader will obtain a foundation in chemical engineering that can be applied directly to the workplace. By the end of this book, the user will be aware of the major considerations required to safely and efficiently design and operate a chemical processing facility. Case studies are included throughout, building a real-world connection. This book is ideal for professionals working with chemical engineers, and decision makers in chemical engineering industries.