I'm currently enrolled in a chemical engineering course in my college, and in my first year, I'd like to get a nice introductory book on that field of study. I'd prefer that the book covers several topics, but less in-depth analysis of each.
Unfortunately the big-list in the Resources for learning Chemistry post does not yet cover this topic yet. With respect to the meta discussion the answer to this question will be amended to that list (and this question can be closed as duplicate after the fact).
Answer
I'm studying chemical engineering for more than two years and what I can tell you is that is not really a lot of "good" books you may read as an introduction.
You have to understand that Chemical Engineering contains both "Chemical" and "Engineering". The first one refers to chemistry whereas the second refers to the way to make something. I mean a chemical engineer who works at Metalor (which makes gold bars and so on) really as not the same problems as another one working at Air Liquide (which produce liquid gas).
Now if you are looking for what we call the basics, any chemical engineer must be good in at least in fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and kinetics, mathematics and informatics.
- Fluid mechanics because in any plant, whatever you produce, you need to be able to size pipes, reactors and so on.
- Thermodynamics because when you are sizing somethings and also looking for safety and security you need to know what properties the molecules involved in your plant have. Kinetics because this is important to know the rate of a reaction and a lof other stuff related to catalysts etc.
- Mathematics because you can't do the first two without it and not a lot of things else.
- And informatics because this is pretty hard to all the correlation and models by hand when sizing something and also needed for process control.
Now if you speak French, the book "Le génie chimique à l'usage des chimistes" by Joseph Lieto gives a pretty good overview about Chemical Engineering with, what it is related about, how to make a balance (of mass or energy or momentum), basic operation units (distillation and crystallisation), mass and heat transfer, thermodynamics, kinetics and process control.
The best reference I have for chemical engineering is the McGraw-Hill Chemical Engineering Series which contains more than you should know as a student. After you'll need to get strong knowledge in all area of chemistry because as an engineer and a chemist especially if you are looking for sizing operation, you'll need to think about details, which are not in the books, unfortunately.
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