Rating: 
Summary: Typos, Typos, Typos...
Review: At about a 5th grade reading level, this book does a decent job in explaining the basics of chemical reaction engineering. Way too many typos in it, however, and that really annoys me...
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Best book by far that I have had as undergrad. Highly recommended. We all love it at the University of Utah.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Best book by far that I have had as undergrad. Highly recommended. We all love it at the University of Utah.
Rating: 
Summary: The book is quite as good as ready made.
Review: I am pleased to write this letter as I am studying chemical reactors both endothemic and exothermic type and get a lot of knowledge. And my back ground is not chemical engineer and the book makes me to understand within the shortest period
Rating:
Summary: Good book for Serious Chemical Engineers
Review: I wish I had this book before I took my CHE Modeling class or CHE Fluids class. It's a pretty good book at a undergrad level. It gives a basic intro to basic Chemical Reaction engineering (CRE). You might want to get Octave Levenspeil's Omnibook as a reference also.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for Serious Chemical Engineers
Review: I wish I had this book before I took my CHE Modeling class or CHE Fluids class. It's a pretty good book at a undergrad level. It gives a basic intro to basic Chemical Reaction engineering (CRE). You might want to get Octave Levenspeil's Omnibook as a reference also.
Rating: 
Summary: A compile of "copies"
Review: If you have read this book, I bet you are familar with sentences like "we closely follow the development given by ..." in more of the derivations. Most likely, the citation is another textbook. It is ok to refer to another textbook, but the problem is that Professor Fogler's citation is usually far from "closely". Grabbing parts of derivation without the necessary context is very frustrating. Don't even mention that after you read some of the originals, you will find that Professor Fogler usually does not understand what the originals say himself. This is a terrible textbook. A lot of typos. A lot of misleading "derivations". Professor Fogler showed a confused knowledge about reactors. For example, in nonideal reactors, he gave two important concepts, i.e. "macromixing" and "micromixing", which are supposed to be guiding the following developments about models. However, in the development, you can never see a word discussing about how a particular model treated the "macromixing" and "micromixing" in real reators, except the simplest "segregation" and "maximum mixedness" models. Of course, no comparisons about different models in these terms.
Most materials in this textbook were developed before 1960s using the knowledge obtained at the beginning of 1900s. It is very sad to see that after over 50 years, people are still confused about the basic concepts. Without a clear understanding about the concepts, how can an individual correctly apply the derived results? Unfornately, the derived results seem to be the emphases of this book.
Although this book has a huge amount of exercise problems, most of them are "plug-in" kinda questions. It seems that Professor Fogler is trying to encourage students to "obey the rules and forget about thinking"... Ironically, Professor Fogler spent quite some time in the Preface talking about "creative thinking". How can you creatively apply the results if you don't even know where they come from, how they were developed and what the limitations are?
To bad that I spent my precious time reading it and ... Hope you won't...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: In contrast with what my fellow Ann Arbor reviewer (and most likely UM ChE student), I tended to think that Fogler's book was an excellent way by which to learn the principles of Chemical Reaction Engineering. The book is well organized and while the chapters may skip some, the principle chapters (1-6 in the sixth printing) are the recommended starting chapters. Once passing through chapters 1 - 6, the topics do deviate some, but the fundamental principles necessary to understand any of the topics in chapters 7 and beyond are well established prior to engaging the later material. While my colleague from Ann Arbor may be correct in noting that there are several different printings of the third edition text, Fogler provides adequate typo errors on the text website. In terms of POLYMATH, Fogler does rely on this computer software to show many of the examples in his book. For a good bulk of the examples and homework problems, however, the operation of POLYMATH is extremely easy. If one knows how to type equations into a table and press a 'calculate' button, one can easily run POLYMATH. Fogler provides the program on the CD that accompanies the text. It makes solving differential equations (and their solution curves) much easier than doing so by hand.I must say that this is the best Chemical Engineering textbook I've had as a student (Geankopolis was a close second). Fogler establishes the principles of CRE well, and the language of the text is not above and beyond reading comprehension. The style Fogler uses is very algorithmic, which, after utilizing the algorithm over and over again, makes reactor design problems much easier to deal with. Having been one of Fogler's students, I will agree that he tries very hard to relate to students. He is the only professor I've had that tries to learn each student's name. While there might be a few interesting (cheesy) examples and illustrations in the book, they do at times provide some comical relief from the rigors of Chemical Reaction Engineering. Not to mention, the additional material (Interactive Computer Modules, Real World Examples, Chaper Notes, Self Tests) that Fogler provides on the text CD an website are available to further enrich the mind of a struggling learner. This book, at least from a student's perspective, is wonderful!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Make sure to order the most recent printing of the 3rd edition when ordering this book. There are currently 6 printings as of 4/23/03, and there are SUBSTANTIAL differences between the printings!!! (Different questions, rewritten chapters, updated examples, etc.) Also, if you are not familiar with Polymath, you will not understand most of the examples in the book. Fogler relies very heavily on this program. While it is not a bad program, there are some quirks that make it difficult to use. Fogler has an odd sense of humor, and has a number of cheesy references (if you didn't know that he taught at the University of Michigan, you will be well aware of it by the time you are done with this book!). He tries really hard to relate to students, but it comes off as being really corny. PROS: Well-organized tables/flow charts to help with problem-solving. CONS: Over-reliant on Polymath, confusing examples, chapters "skip" between topics
Rating:
Summary: Words of caution . . .
Review: Make sure to order the most recent printing of the 3rd edition when ordering this book. There are currently 6 printings as of 4/23/03, and there are SUBSTANTIAL differences between the printings!!! (Different questions, rewritten chapters, updated examples, etc.) Also, if you are not familiar with Polymath, you will not understand most of the examples in the book. Fogler relies very heavily on this program. While it is not a bad program, there are some quirks that make it difficult to use. Fogler has an odd sense of humor, and has a number of cheesy references (if you didn't know that he taught at the University of Michigan, you will be well aware of it by the time you are done with this book!). He tries really hard to relate to students, but it comes off as being really corny. PROS: Well-organized tables/flow charts to help with problem-solving. CONS: Over-reliant on Polymath, confusing examples, chapters "skip" between topics
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