Most chemical engineers grew up with BSL. For myself, I found out what the graduate students were using. The old red-back version was intimidating. It was hard to use. The calculus was, and is, generally over my head. But... after reading through a few problems, the mathematics seemed familiar, the approach seemed to explain all my questions and the solution was, if not directly applicable, one that I could borrow for a difficult problem.
I remember once working on a product development for Andrew Jergens. My goal was to estimate the production capacity of a stepwise batch process. Others would ultimately use my numbers to estimate the price of the product. I had to get it right! One step involved melting this wax, a synthetic whale wax, over an electric heater. I knew the BTU output but there were several physical constraints. After a few sleepless nights and pawing through the University of Cincinnati library I was stumped. Then, I started looking through BSL.Oui la! There is a problem on de-frosting turkeys ¯ a real life practical application of heat transfer; supposedly, this is how Birdseye came up with the table you see on the outside of turkey wrappings on Thanksgiving.
It did not take me long to see the application. I spent a morning doing lab experiments for my physical properties and the afternoon fitting the measurements to their procedure. The method worked.
The second edition has much better graphics and a good index. The index and table of contents in the first edition made the book unwieldy.
I recently became interested in calculating the heat-up time in a hydrolysis bed. One of the crucial problems was calculating h', the volumetric heat transfer coefficient (BTU/hr-cubic feet-F: h X l). There is an excellent method developed by Shumann in another great book: Kern's "Process Heat Transfer." BSL presents a method for estimating h that can be transformed into h' by:
h' = h X Ac/V, where Ac=cross area; V=volume of bed. With the old version, finding this section of the book was very time consuming. The second edition made it easy.
There is one downside of the 2nd edition. To make it easier to read, the publisher increased its length and width. Unfortunately, as experience has born out, this tends to make a book more prone to shearing along its binding. I intent to wrap this book in heavy plastic to add some reinforcement. I suggest you do likewise.
I will keep you posted as I continue to use this book. I may give my old red-back to some younger engineer ---to knaw on the edges before they ask me for the answer.
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