Diffusion: Mass Transfer in Fluid Systems

It is a very nice book explaining very well the basics of diffusion. But it also covers the more specialized diffusion situations.

I feel that this is an excellent book for any student taking their first mass transport and separations course. This is the only science/engineering text book I have ever owned that I actually enjoyed reading. Professor Cussler is a very enthusiastic and brilliant expert on the subject (I am a student in his department, and was lucky enough to have him guest lecture for us) and it really shows in his writing style in this book. This book manages to present the subject matter clearly starting from the basics and then logically and clearly building up to much more complex material, all while Professor Cussler walks you through the reasons why he is taking the steps he is, and how these steps are justified. This book is very frank and enthusiastic when presenting material (Professor Cussler makes sure to let you know if he is skipping steps, or what steps are common sources of confusion and to pay attention to these steps). The third edition also separates the sections on differential and staged distillation into two stand-alone chapters, and also incorporates more examples to relate the topics of this book to medicine and biology, helping to broaden the appeal of this book. That being said, there are still some improvements this book could make for the next revision (not likely to come for a while since the 3rd edition was just released this year). There are some typos/mislabels scattered about the text, but nothing so major as to make the understanding the material impossible. All the typos are pretty minor and would be easily sorted out through a quick comparison to class notes or reading the text as Professor Cussler explains what he is doing. Furthermore, there are also several problems that have answers listed that aren't "exactly" right, meaning they appear to have been rounded off too much.

I think this book is really a good book for students, and for people who want to refresh their understandings about diffusion. I am now interested in diffusion in polymer/solvents solution during coated film is being dried. The drying mechanism is complicated as this is a moving boundary problem, accompanying multi-component diffusion in the coated layer and solvents evaporation from the surface. This book contains little topics relating to the above, but still I felt the necessity of returning to fundamentals, and read this book. The writing style of this book is very frank, viz. the author expresses his value judgments and opinions based on his experiences. If I were young, I would like to take his lessons using this book. I couldn't understand why ratings hear are so much spreading.

This is an excellent book to learn the basics of Separation Processes. Cussler managed to explain Chemical Engineering concepts in a very easy way to understand by students. I was lucky to get him as my lecturer several years ago to learn Separation processes.