Looking for thermo textbook

[LordUlrich]

I am looking to explore some the the technical aspects of brewery design.

I am looking for a good book for the thermodynamics, particularly heat exchanger design and kettle dynamics. If there are any other major thermo topics of importance I would be interested.

I do have a masters in civil engineering but never took thermodynamics, so a university level text book won't scare me, but a book which explains things such that i can teach myself would be great.

Thanks

 

[cruelkix]

I am looking to explore some the the technical aspects of brewery design.

I am looking for a good book for the thermodynamics, particularly heat exchanger design and kettle dynamics. If there are any other major thermo topics of importance I would be interested.

I do have a masters in civil engineering but never took thermodynamics, so a university level text book won't scare me, but a book which explains things such that i can teach myself would be great.

Thanks

This is the book I used in college about ...6 years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Heat-Transfer-Frank-Incropera/dp/0471457280/ref=pd_sim_b_6

It was pretty good. Definetly a good introduction to heat tranfser principles. With your background you should be able to extrapolate the equations/ideas to get to where you want to go. I might still ahve it in my basement... I'll take a look and see how easy it would be to self teach off it.

 

[Tholan]

How'd you get a MS in CivE without Thermo? It was required for my BS. Total PITA class too, the prof wrote the textbook and it was riddled (not a pun on ERAU) with errors. Best way to get an A in his class was to have exposed breasts in the front row.

That being said the best thing about his book was the giant chart of units (common and uncommon) in the front. Great for Mixology, converting chains to stations, stones to kilos, rods to fathoms etc. Jack, Gil, Jigger, hand, foot, cubit, etc. If I remember right 1 oz is a mouthful. 2 oz is a Jack is a handful. 4 oz is 2 Jacks is a Gil. 8 oz is 2 Gils is a cup, etc. Hence that nursery rythme about jack jill and the hill.

 

[LordUlrich]

Each university is a bit different, for me Thermo was a tech elective, and well i knew it was a PITA (although in hindsight it may have been a good class to take). For my specialization (traffic operations) thermo is pretty useless too.

 

[Tholan]

I am an Airport Engineer, so thermo was equally worthless. But the concepts are good for understand system failure mechanics and other daily life things.

What is most unsettling about thermo is how expansive the solution set can be. A braket of 50 to 200 units is an example of an acceptable range for many equation sets; which I would thing even Mechnicals scratch their heads at and say "Really? That's the ROM you want to give me?"

 

[ajdelange]

Thermo is extremely valuable in any engineering discipline and is based on three simple laws:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even.
3. Things are going to get worse.

 

[StMarcos]

You don't want a thermodynamics text, you want thermal engineering. Thermo is for physicists to muss about with TdS equations. I've learned it mostly from the physics and materials eng. (phase transformations) point of view, but would have been better served by more of a mech E point of view. Don't get Sears and Salinger!!!!

 

[ajdelange]

Thermo is for physicists to muss about with TdS equations.

And chemists too. All of the equilibrium chemistry we use when considering brewing water treatment is based on thermodynamic equilibrium (even though its often the case that the water that comes out of the tap or well isn't in thermodynamic equilibrium).

 

[bluecarpetsample]

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of these subjects, you'll want to look at Engineering Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer. I disagree with the previous poster that said thermodynamics is just TdS. Although that's basically true for all thermo-related questions, the topic in engineering courses is far more applied than in physics and chemistry courses.

The heat transfer book by Incropera is really good, that's what I used in my undergrad heat transfer course as well as TAed out of. Make sure to get the "Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer" and not just heat transfer. There is some good thermal-flow basics in there that the other doesn't include. If you're adventurous and nerdy enough, you can use the finite difference sections to write code to model things like the thermal profile of cooling water within a worth chiller. You might be able to get this book cheap by looking for an international edition. Basically, these are printed in 3rd world counties on cheaper paper and in paperback editions. You can typiacally get a copy though someone on eBay from China or Taiwan. It's typically less than half the price of a new copy.

As for thermodynamics, this is where you looking at engine cycles and heat absorption/release do to phase changes and what not. The book that I have used is:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471787353/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Moran and Shapiro are good writers as well as include a lengthy appendix full of thermo-constant tables. There is some of the TdS stuff in this book, but they quickly move away from that to using Entropy and Enthalpy in useful ways that make sense.

If you're cheap and don't want to pay anything you can always try wikibooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Heat_Transfer
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Engineering_Thermodynamics
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Fluid_Mechanics

 

[vaperz95]

As a Purdue BSME grad I had Dewitt for class. Yes, "Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer" is the main book you will use for most of a brewery design, but Thermo would be used for enthalpy, entropy, steam tables, and all that jazz. Moran/Shaprio as posted above is an extremely good book and the one I used.

 

[ajdelange]

If you're adventurous and nerdy enough, you can use the finite difference sections to write code to model things like the thermal profile of cooling water within a worth chiller.

Actually, you can do this without consulting a text if you have basic calculus skills. All you need to know is that heat flows between two bodies in thermal contact at a rate (BTU/sec) equal to the temperature difference divided by a constant (the thermal impedance between the two*) and that the rate of change of temperature of a mass into or out of which heat is flowing is equal to the rate of heat flow divided by the thermal mass of the body. The thermal mass of 1 pound of water is 1 °F/BTU. You are actually using the First Law here but you don't even need to be aware of that. There are some notes at www.wetnewf.org.

*The real art in dealing with heat exchanger design is in minimizing the thermal impedance between the two channels. It depends, of course, on the material and its thickness but also on whether fins have been incorporated (as they are in some designs) and on the flow rates (whether they are laminar or turbulent). IOW, you really need to know some Fluid Mechanics as well but like the nitty of the thermo you can ignore all that and just measure thermal impedance as a function of flow.