Preface
We are pleased and delighted to offer the fourth edition of our textbook on chemical process safety. It is amazing to us that our original concept from the late 1980s—to produce a process safety textbook for undergraduates that reflects industrial practice—still endures and is just as valuable today as when we first envisioned this resource.
For most traditional chemical engineering courses—such as stoichiometry or thermodynamics—the technical content has been well established for many years. This is not the case for process safety, which remains a dynamically evolving field. This ever-changing nature presented an enormous challenge to us when we sought to update our text to match current technology and industrial practice.
All textbooks have several requirements. First, the content must be of value to the student or reader and must be presented in a clear and well-organized fashion. Second, the content must develop progressively, working from what the student knows to what the student doesn’t know. Third, the content must be active, with lots of worked examples, figures, and tables. In our case, the textbook must also reflect industrial practice. These requirements are not easy to achieve, but we have strived to meet them in all editions of our text.
The first edition of our text was published in 1990. The main effort with the first edition was to develop a workable outline—which took a considerable effort because what we proposed had never been done before. Once the outline was developed, we then needed to collect the technical content from industry and modify and organize it for student instruction.
The second edition was published in 2002. This text was primarily an incremental edition with content additions that we realized were missing in the first edition. In particular, we added new content on flammability, primarily on the use of the flammability triangle diagrams and how they are applied to estimate target concentrations.
The third edition was published in 2011. This edition added a new chapter on chemical reactivity—which really should have been included in the first edition. The major development here was to recast the theoretical model into dimensionless form to simplify the equations for student manageability. We also continued our efforts to update the text to current industry practice.
The fourth edition was a major challenge. Process safety technology and industrial practice had changed substantially since the publication of the third edition. This resulted in a major overhaul of the entire text. Several chapters were completely rewritten, and all chapters had major modifications. We also removed some content that we deemed to be of lesser value since we wanted to reduce the page count. This removed content is still available for instructors on the Pearson Instructor Resource Center (https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/subject-catalog/download-instructor-resources.html).
In the first three editions, we developed new homework problems for each edition, with the result that the third edition contained more than 100 pages of homework. We decided to reduce the homework content significantly with the fourth edition, since homework appears to have less value in today’s teaching environment. The 100 pages of homework from previous editions remains available for instructors on the Pearson Instructor Resource Center (https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/subject-catalog/download-instructor-resources.html).
Acknowledgments
We have an enormous number of people to thank for helping us with the fourth and previous editions. As the saying goes, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Many of the folks who assisted with previous editions have passed away, including Trevor Kletz, Gerry Boicourt, Jack Wehman, Walt Howard, Stan Grossel, Reid Welker, Charles Springer, and Ron Darby.
For this fourth edition, we thank Ray Mentzer and Ken First, who served as technical reviewers. Both Ray and Ken have both industrial and teaching experience, so their edits were very helpful, and served as a compass for our work.
We would also like to thank Ken Tague, Don Eure, Scott Tipler, Chris Devlin, Marc Levin, John Murphy, Roy Sanders, Amy Theis, Vincent Wilding, Chad Mashuga, Bob Johnson, Tom Spicer, and Ron Willey for making many content suggestions. If we missed someone, we apologize for our omission.
The Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (SACHE) faculty workshops held at a variety of chemical companies, including Dow, BASF, ADM, Cargill, Reliance, and Wacker, were instrumental in providing information and educational materials on industrial practice for this fourth edition.
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AICHE) Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) provided an enormous reference library and many experienced and willing industrial contacts.
Finally, we thank our wives and loved ones, who endured our emotional and physical absence during this sustained project.
We hope that this textbook continues to prevent chemical plant and academic accidents and contributes to a much safer future.
—Daniel A. Crowl
Salt Lake City, UT
—Joseph F. Louvar
Milwaukee, WI
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