Electrochimica Aera. Vol. 37, No. 6, p. 1153, 1992

Pagamon Pm8 plc. Rioted ia Great Britain.

BOOK REVIEW

ELECTROCHEMICAL ENGINEERING

By G. PRENTICE

Prentice Hall, New York, 1991, 296~~.

PRINCIPLES

This textbook is derived from the author’s course in electro- chemical engineering at The John Hopkins University in the U.S.A. and is aimed at students in chemical engineering for whom electrochemistry is not a familiar or well covered area of their degree course. This results in a considerable treatment of fundamental electrochemical science and to a lesser extent fundamental chemical engineering. The electro- chemical engineering content is confined to the final three of the nine overall chapters. The contents of the book are as follows.

Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of (in four pages) the major applications of electrochemical processes, albeit with an United States of America perspective, and a quick history of its industrial development.

Chapter 2 provides a coverage of certain basic concepts in electrochemistry including the convention of electrode potentials, Faraday’s law and efficiencies, ion conduction and transference numbers.

Thermodynamic aspects of electrochemistry are intro- duced in Chapter 3 with the focus being on the Nernst equation and the Pourbaix diagram.

Chapter 4 follows on from Chapter 3 considering the behaviour of ions in solution, activity coefficients and their determination using the Debye-Hiickel Theory and solution and junction potentials.

Chapter 5 brings in the classic ideas associated with electrode kinetics starting with the Helmholtz and Gouy-Chapman models of electric double layer. The Butler-Voher model of electrode kinetics is dehved and the linear and Tafel derivatives discussed. Reference electrodes are introduced to explain potential measurement. Some mechanistic aspects of electrochemical reactions are discussed including principles of electrochemical cor- rosion.

Chapter 6 moves on to other rate processes in electro- chemical systems. The fundamental ion transfer rate model is discussed and leads into some consideration of the mass transfer boundary layer. Concentration polarization, limit- ing currents and film mass transfer coefficients and corre.lat- ing equations lead into a description of electrochemical rotating disc and cylinder electrodes.

Chapter 7, Modeling and Simulation, devotes consider- able effort to the important area of current and potential distribution in cells. The methodology of simulation is described in relation to potential distribution determination and a numerical method of model solution described and the associated computer programme given as an Appendix. Gas evolving electrodes are introduced, somewhat out of con- text. The one-dimensional model (Newman and Tobias) of the current distribution in porous electrodes concludes this chapter.

Chapter 8, Experimental Methods, is not quite what it sounds as it merely informs the reader of the types of electrode commonly used in electrochemical analysis, ie rotating disc and ring-disc, rotating cylinder and the chan- nel flow cell. Mass transfer behaviour of these devices is discussed however and is supported by a table of mass transfer correlations of different electrode geometries, in an Appendix.

The final chapter entitled applications is a brief treatment of a few specific areas of electrochemical engineering. These are energy storage, the chlor-alkali industry and a thermally regenerative electrochemical system.

Each chapter is followed by a set of student based questions as might be expected from a text of this nature. A bibliography, although quite brief, is appended to each chapter. It is disappointing to see only a few examples of basic calculations relevant to the subject matter included in this text.

This book will be useful to those engineers or scientists who require an introduction to the fundamentals of electro- chemical science and to how these principles are related to industrial electrochemical processes. The extent of the en- gineering is limited, which is the only major criticism of the work. An additional 50 pages or so on this area would have improved the balance of the text and done justice to the title. Outside the U.S.A. I cannot see this book used as a course text, although I would include it as “recommended” reading to underpin graduate and undergraduate studies in electro- chemical engineering.

KElTH sc0l-r

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