You will notice the increased use of SI units. Section 1, of thirty Handbook sections, "Conversion Factors and Mathematical Symbols", provides a rescue line for those of us much more accustomed to U.S., British, and older Metric units and who are not fully conversant with S.I. units. The first one-third of the Handbook lays the theoretical groundwork for a fuller understanding of its final two-thirds.

Section 2 provides physical properties data, including tables of constants for properties' correlations covering wide temperature ranges. Methods for the prediction and correlation of physical properties are explained. Section 3 summarizes mathematics through differential equations and statistics. Sections 4 through 7 may be considered short texts on "Thermodynamics", "Heat and Mass Transfer", "Fluid and Particle Dynamics", and "Reaction Kinetics".

In its eighty-four double column text pages, Section 8 covers the "Fundamentals of Process Dynamics and Control". It includes model predictive control, process optimization, unit operations control, process measurements, and concludes with controllers, final control elements, and regulators. Section 9, "Process Economics", takes the reader through calculations involved in investment and profitability decisions, cost control, and cost estimation. Starting with Section 10, "Transport and Storage of Fluids", and for most of the following twenty sections, the chemical engineering unit operations, details of more specialized theories and operating practices, calculation methods, interface studies between chemical engineering and other disciplines (i.e., Biochemical Engineering and Waste Management), and data specific to the topic being presented are given.

As previously stated, these latter sections, about two-thirds of the book, build upon an understanding of the fundamentals presented earlier. For example, Section 10; Section 11, "Heat Transfer Equipment"; Section 12, "Psychrometry, Evaporative Cooling, and Solids Drying"; Section 13, "Distillation"; Section 14, "Gas Absorption"; Section 15, "Liquid-Liquid Extraction"; Section 16, "Adsorption and Ion Exchange"; Section 17, "Gas-Solid Operations and Equipment"; and Section 18, "Liquid-Solid Operations and Equipment"; build on an understanding of Section 4, "Thermodynamics", Section 5, "Heat and Mass Transfer", and Section 6 "Fluid and Particle Dynamics". However, the book sections are all prepared to be rather self-sufficient so that readers without the earlier fundamental background can still gather useful working information.

The final twelve sections complete the review of unit operations and add important interdisciplinary studies. The sections are: "Solid-Solid Operations and Equipment"; "Size Reduction and Size Enlargement"; "Handling of Bulk Solids and Packaging of Solids and Liquids"; "Alternative Separation Processes"; "Chemical Reactors" (building on Section 7 "Reaction Kinetics"); "Biochemical Engineering"; "Waste Management"; "Process Safety"; "Energy resources, Conversion, and Utilization"; "Materials of Construction"; "Process Machinery Drives"; and "Analysis of Plant Performance";

Actually, a reasonable understanding of the contents of Perry's, including how to find and use the voluminous data, is equivalent to the text-based learning at the completion of a Master's degree in chemical engineering.

63 of 79 found the following review helpful:


What's all the fuss?  Nov 10, 2000
Perry's has been gathering dust on my bookshelf at home for years. I always think of it as the book to go to if you want to NOT find the answer to something. In my 20 year career and in my PE test effort, the only thing I ever used it for was to look up properties of substances. It is NOT friendly to the working engineer, since it quickly veers into arcane academic territory on every subject, or else is too general to be useful. This is a serious review of this book by a ChE PE, but I know this review will get panned by all, not because it is not useful, but because you do not agree with it.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:


A must for a Chemical Engineer  Jan 06, 2000 By Vinay Medhekar
A great assortment of theory and practical data, this book is a must for all chemical engineers. This book provides at ones desk all the information one needs. The use of the book in the beginning is difficult but once learned, it serves as a powerful tool. I have not seen any other reference book as complete and practical oriented with an answer to the needs of the Chemical Engineer as this one.

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:


consider the Platimum edition instead  Feb 19, 2000 By Francis Philpot "college prof"
The same 7th edition (1997), but printed in 1999 and accompanied of a CD with the entire text (in Adobe Acrobat format) can be bought by essentially the same price as a "Platimum Edition"; a much better deal. Beware of the CD-only version; you'll have to read 3000 pages in two columns on your screen!.

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