Page 34 - Fundamentals of Water Treatment Unit Processes : Physical, Chemical, and Biological

Preface

This book is intended primarily as a text for a course in water treatment unit processes. As a note, boxes of living persons
treatment normally taught to seniors or first-year graduate were not included without their respective verbal permissions.
students. The academic background needed includes the basic In writing biography boxes, I did not consider persons
undergraduate courses in engineering, that is, mathematics, who were of my generation or younger, albeit I know many
general chemistry, and fluid mechanics. who would warrant such consideration, but perhaps from a
The main thrust of the book was to delineate principles that younger writer.
support practice. The ‘‘unit processes’’ approach was the The book is organized as follows: Parts I through IV
organizing concept. Most of the principles identified are com- (Chapters 1 through 21) are distillations of Water Treatment
mon to any kind of water treatment, for example, drinking Unit Processes—Physical and Chemical (CRC Press, Boca
water, municipal wastewater, industrial water, industrial was- Raton, FL, 2006). Part V (Chapters 22 and 23 and on bio-
tewater, and hazardous wastewater. The book seeks to iden- logical treatment) was developed for this book. The intent was
tify the strands of theory rather than to keep up with the latest to abstract key principles of unit processes with minimal
technologies. The underlying idea was that technologies amplification. The 2006 book is more comprehensive, with
change but principles remain constant. additional theory and examples of practice. Problems are
The chapters are sprinkled with boxes which are explana- intended to illustrate principles, but with regard to practice.
tory asides. The idea of the boxes was to enlarge the reader’s The SI (kg-m-s) system of units has been used; other metric
perspective of a topic by including some of the lore and units have been used as needed. The equivalent U.S. custom-
history. Understanding how we arrived at our present state ary units are shown in most tables and figures.
of the art places it in a more logical context. The book intends
not only to provide technical proficiency but also to add David Hendricks
insight and understanding of the broader aspects of water

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