Green chemistry and engineering
Green chemistry and engineering
Mukesh Doble and Anil Kumar Kruthiventi
Burlington, US: Academic Press | 2007 | 381pp | ?39.99 (HB) | ISBN 9780123725325
Reviewed by Alexei Lapkin
This book is an attempt at a general overview of the many aspects of green chemistry, from atom-efficient reactions to novel solvents and process intensification. It is difficult to identify the intended readership: it is not detailed enough to be a post-graduate or a research text and it would not serve as an undergraduate textbook, for the lack of in-depth consideration of examples and lack of exercises. It is also not general enough to be a popular text.
The authors have a rather haphazard approach to the use of earlier literature, some of the research being adequately referencing or not referenced at all. The authors do not give references in several of the chapters, but do provide a reference to US EPA when writing the Arrhenius equation!
Many of the figures in the book are poorly executed computer sketches, badly drawn chemical structures and are often misleading or erroneous; for example, the representations of reactive distillation, impinging jet reactors and microreactors in chapter six.
The book contains an incredible amount of technically wrong information. In table 2.1, for example, the authors suggest that microwaves are not suitable for liquids, which is total nonsense; they do not differentiate between ’E-factor’ and ’atom economy’; they give wrong information about the Catalytica selective oxidation process; and they misrepresent the concept of catalytic distillation, to name but a few.
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