COMBUSTION AND FLAME 25, 141-142(1975)
BOOK REVIEW
Combustion Technology: Some Modern Develop-
ments. Edited by H. B. Palmer & J. M. Be~r.
Academic Press, New York, 1974, xiv + 455 pp.
$32.50.
There are not many books on the theory and
practice of combustion, and most of them are out-
of-date and limited in scope. Therefore, every addi-
tion to the literature is to be received appreciatively, unfairly (to the authors) by my having heard MHD
and commended if possible. The 455 handsomely
printed and bound pages of the present volume,
and the well-known names of the editors and con-
tributors, encourage expectancy; this is only
slightly diminished by the prefatory disclosure
that the book arose out of a course of lectures.
Courses of lectures delivered by eminent, but
highly varied, personages are bound to lack unity
of approach, level and quality. Of the present
volume it can be said that this inevitable defect
is less obtrusive than it might have been; so the
editors deserve praise for exercising their persua-
sive powers, and the authors for their willingness
in part to conform.
Howard B. Palmer starts his valuable review of
equilibria and chemical kinetics in flames with the
combustion engineer's adage : If it's mixed, it's
burnt. This reminds one of the combustion scient-
ist's adage : If it'sprinted, it's out-of-date. Both
of these sayings are merely half-truths, and Pro-
fessor Palmer's contribution, being overtly in-
tended to disprove the first, succeeds also in dis-
proving the second. The bibliography is very use-
ful.
Altogether there are fifteen contributions, each
deserving a full review. Here it is possible to make
only brief and subjective remarks. I begin with
those contributions that I am least qualified to
review.
I learned from, but cannot criticize, W. T. Reid's he and his co-workers are less deeply engaged (in
chapter on Corrosion and Deposits in Combustion
Systems, G. J. Penzias's on Temperature Measure-
ments and Gas Analysis in Flames and Plasmas
using Spectroscopic Methods, and D. W. Locklin's
141
on Recent Research and Development in Residen-
t&l Oil Burners. The same is true of the chapters
by A. A. Putnam and D. J. Brown on Combustion
Noise, and by R. J. Heinsohn and P. M. Becker,
on Effects o f Electric FieMs on Flames.
My enthusiasm for the chapters by J. Swithen-
bank and S. Way, concerned with magnetohy-
drodynamic power generation, was diminished
likened to a second marriage, in that it represents,
in Samuel Johnson's phrase, "the triumph of hope
over experience". This may be unfair, it now
occurs to me, to second marriages as well: for some
of them are successful; but I am not sure that this
can be said of MHD projects.
There are three chapters on radiative heat
transfer, namely: Heat Transfer from Non-Lumi-
nous Flames in Furnaces, by H. C. Hottel, A. F.
Sarofim and I. H. Farag; Radiative Exchange in
Combustion Chambers, by the same authors; and
Radiation from Flames in Furnaces by J. M.
Be~r. As one would expect, the standard material
is here professionally presented; and, if criticism
is to be made, it must point to what is not provided,
that is, a detailed and critical account of the now-
widely-used "flux" methods, and an apprecia-
tion of the problem of calculating the radiative
heat transfer simultaneously with the convective
and chemical-kinetic processes.
There are two chapters on aerodynamic
aspects of flames: Combustion Aerodynamics,
by J. M. Be~r, and Flame Stabilisation in High
Velocity Flow by J. Swithenbank. Of the first, I
would say that the author has done what most
over-busy professors do : he has included material
which, having been produced in his own labora-
tory, was easy to include (i.e., experimental data),
but dealt more skimpily with aspects with which
this case theoretical methods). I should be the
last person to berate him for this.
Of the second, it can be said that the author
has provided 36 pages of (so far as I could see)
Copyright 1975 by the Combustion Institute
Published by American Elsevier Publishin~ Company. Inc.
142
true statements, without making it clear how
they cohere with each other or with his purpose,
whatever that may be. The chapter ends with a
recounting o f the theory of the well-stirred reactor,
which is attributed to L. A. Vulis. I admire
Vulis; and I have no doubt that his discoveries
were made independently, and much earlier than
the 1961 date o f the cited publication. However,
I think that some nods might have been made in
the direction of van Heerden, Avery, Longwell,
Bragg and others, who published the main features
in the early 1950's (I even did some work myself).
The well-stirred reactor appears again exten-
sively in the chapter by R. H. Essenhigh, An Intro-
duction to Stirred Reactor Theory Applied to the
Design of Combustion Chambers. This chapter, and
that entitled, Furnace Analysis : A Comparative
Study, by R. H. Essenhigh, A. C. Thekdi, G.
Malhouitre and Y-W Tsai, I found troublesome to
read, despite the evident eagerness o f the authors
to inform me, and the extensive testimonies to
their erudition that the reference lists provided.
The name "Furnace Analysis" was a new one to
me; I was struck by the portentious phrases :
"Furnace analysis is a general theory of furnace
behaviour and overall thermal performance",
"Furnace analysis originated as an empirical study",
"Theoretical furnace analysis was developed in
due course to explain all this experimental behav-
iour", " . . . it was on this basis that we set out
to develop the necessary generality by removing
the purely mechanistic c o m p o n e n t s . . . " These
phrases aroused expectations in my mind that
were left, at the end, unsatisfied. No doubt I should
have known better, and I cannot blame the authors,
but finally it appeared that furnace analysis is
BOOK REVIEW
what all o f us do when we apply relevant scienti-
fic knowledge, especially conservation laws, to
furnace-combustion processes.
One of the authors is kind enough to commend
me for arguing, somewhere or other, that one
should not build a complex chemical-kinetic super-
structure upon a primitive fluid-dynamic founda-
tion. Encouraged by this, I will now pronounce
that one ought not to obscure a simple idea with
an excess of abstract words. Here is an example
of the kind of writing that troubled me:
However, as Preisendorfer (1965) has pointed out in
comparing the utility of phenomenological in contrast
to mechanistic theories, any equation system of appre-
ciable complexity in the mechanistic construct, that is
so intractable that simplifying assumptions are required,
is thereby involved in a fidelity-reducingprocedure, and
sometimes to an extent that is not fully explored. Con-
cession to complexity to achieve a solution generally
modifies the structure of the equations themselves, and
therefore the functions they govern, which means modi-
fication of the physical processes the functions are
supposed to represent. A finite-element formulation,
such as a stirred-reactor representation, is also a
fidelity-reducing procedure; but, as Preisendorfer
emphasized, this is a space-modifying rather than a
function-modifying procedure, and as such . . . .
There is lots more like this; I found it rather
fidelity-reducing.
To summarize so large and varied a work is
impossible, and to pass a global judgement on it
unhelpful. What can be said is that every combus-
tion worker who can afford to do so should buy
it; and that in libraries it will be often consulted.
Its publishers deserve our thanks.
D. B. SPALDING