630 Book Reviews
variability of results can often say as much about the test
method as the parameter under evaluation.
All in all, a worthwhile and valuable book, which through-
out contains, what appear to be, exhaustive topic biblio-
graphies for those who want to delve deeper into any
particular aspect of the subject. Inevitably in an area as
involved as this, some material gets more comprehensive
treatment than others, but I was not left with the feeling that
anything significant to the science had been left out. How-
ever, one line could use.fully have been more deeply explored,
and this perhaps illustrates the difference between the
worldly academic and the practical engineer doing real
Liqoid-Vapor Pbaae-ehange Phenomena. By VAN P. CAREY.
Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, Washington,
Philadelphia, London, 1992, 645 pp., El07 (E41 paperback)
Professor Carey has written a substantial and wide-ranging
book on a topic that is so broad, and of which our under-
standing is still so incomplete, that compromises in coverage
are inevitable. The book is subtitled “An Introduction to the
Thermophysics of Vaporization and Condensation Pro-
eesses in Heat Transfer Equipment”. The first 200 pages
introduce the basic physics (thermodynamic equilibrium,
surface tension and wetting, interfacial boundary conditions
and thermal resistances, waves, homogeneous nucleation) to
be used in the following 400 pages on the modelling and
correlation of nucleate and film pool boiling, condensation
on plates and cylinders, two-phase flow in round tubes,
condensation and boiling inside tubes. This treatment is
mainly confined to pure, single-component fluids. A final
section on special topics provides brief discussions of flow
instabilities in tubes, boiling and condensation of binary
mixtures and in finned passages. Little is done to relate the
calculations of heat transfer and pressure drop to the design
of heat transfer equipment. The reader will not learn from
this book what industrial boilers and condensers look like
and may wonder why anyone cares about film boiling on
cylinders and spheres; convective two-phase heat transfer on
the shell side of tube bundles and practical problems of
corrosion and fouling are not discussed. I would have wel-
comed an introductory chapter to put the subject in its
engineering context.
The general plan to proceed from basic phenomena to the
modelling of heat transfer is to be applauded, although the
present incomplete understanding of multiphase heat trans-
fer means that it cannot always be carried through. Thus,
ultra-thin films (a welcome addition to the list of topics in
two-phase textbooks), interfacial resistances and Marangoni
flows all appear in the first part of the book but do not
contribute much to subsequent applications. In part, this is a
consequence of the emphasis on single-component fluids
with local equilibrium and consequently uniform state at the
liquid-vapour interface. The influence of an additional com-
ponent on the interfacial temperature slips is unheralded in a
section on the evaporation of a liquid tilm into an air stream.
Given the practical importance of mixtures of volatile fluids,
designs for industrial process plant. I refer to the dimensions
of cost and practicability of some of the solutions, since these
are as likely to inform the actual selection of methods and
plant as the sophisticated experimental data. A small criti-
cism of a major new text book perhaps, but one that is
probably realistic nevertheless.
I’. G. JONES
Health & Safety Executive
St Annes House
Stanley Precinct
Bootle, Merseyside L20 3MF, U.K.
it would have been helpful to have in the first part of the
book a simple example, say of bubble growth in a uniformly
superheated mixture, illustrating the effect of mass dif-
fusional resistances.
The standard models for heat transfer across continuous
films of liquid or vapour are given in full. Idealized models
for more complicated situations like nucleate boiling and
critical heat flux are sketched out at intermediate levels
broadly representing the state of understanding 5-10 years
ago. For elaboration of these models readers are given
references to follow up and make their own judgments.
Fifteen per cent of the references are to publications in the
decade immediately preceding the publication of this book.
Some substantial bodies of work, e;g. in Germany on nu-
cleate boiling and in Japan on film boiling, are not re-
ferenced. Models often originate from photographic obser-
vations and students should be aware of the often significant
differences between primary data and model. The photo-
genic nature of two-phase flow is one of its attractions and it
is disappointing that the book contains only three photo-
graphs, two of which (showing static sessile drops with high
and low contact angles) were apparently chosen to avoid
over-exciting readers. Professor Carey draws attention to the
weaknesses and contradictions sometimes present in models.
He provides, by worked examples, useful guides to the
application of empirical correlations that must then supply
the answers required by designers.
The book is intended for graduate-level instruction and
could be supplemented by texts such as Smith, R. A., Popor-
isers (1986). Longman 8cimtifrc and Technical, to provide
the engineering context. Problems are provided at the end of
each chapter, in addition to the worked examples in the text.
Research students would find the book a reasonable starting
point but would have to do a lot of additional reading,
starting perhaps from the critical and topical reviews-in the
proceedings of the quadrennial International Heat Transfer
Conferences. For undergraduate instruction there are less
detailed but more readable alternatives.
D. B. R. KENNING
Department of Engineering Science
Oxford University
Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PJ, U.K.