Friday 18 July 2014

Book Review: Hydrometallurgy: Fundamentals and Applications

I thank Sadegh Safarzadeh, Associate Editor of Hydrometallurgy, and Assistant Professor at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA for supplying a review of this new text book.

Authored by Professor Michael L. Free, Hydrometallurgy: Fundamentals and Applications provides an in-depth understanding of the fundamentals of hydrometallurgical science and engineering. The book consists of 12 chapters including Introduction, Chemical Fundamentals of Hydrometallurgy, Speciation and Phase Diagrams, Rate Processes, Metal Extraction, Separation of Dissolved Metals, Metal Recovery Processes, Metal Utilization Environmental Issues, Process Design Principles, General Engineering Economics, General Engineering Statistics, and several useful appendices, including laboratory calculations.

The book has been prepared in 432 pages and published in 2013 by John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey. This textbook is arguably the first of its kind, in the sense that it compiles the fundamentals, applications, reference information and analytical tools on the topic of Hydrometallurgy.

The lack of an inclusive textbook for hydrometallurgy has been felt over the past years. While many of the books published so far are invaluable sources for hydrometallurgy, there was no single book that covered all of the aspects in hydrometallurgy from science to engineering. At the same time, these books appeared to be excellent on some topics, but weak on the other topics. In his book, Professor Free has given equal importance to each of the fundamental topics in hydrometallurgy. Among the important topics that are often weakly written in many related books, if not neglected, are the biochemical and electrochemical reaction kinetics, flowsheet development, and environmental hydrometallurgy. These topics are all covered in this textbook. At the end of each chapter, there is a set of problems that are directly related to the contents of the preceding chapter(s). This book is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students in the field of mineral processing and extractive metallurgy. Also, it is recommended for mineral processing engineers who work in industry.

Professor Michael Free is with the department of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah. He is a well-known hydrometallurgist, with significant contributions to electrometallurgy, engineering pedogogy, and web-based teaching.

We invite further comments on this volume.


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