Environmental modelling and the transport and fate of chemicals in particular are topics that have been covered extensively in earlier texts. However, this new text from Professor John Gulliver offers a comprehensive, accessible and refreshing alternative approach to some complex issues. Gulliver adopts the stance that learning and understanding are best achieved by way of a process of analysis of examples and case studies to which the reader can relate. Gulliver thus presents a broad spectrum of sample scenarios and situations from which fundamental underlying principles are elucidated.
Starting from the development and solution of the diffusion equation, upon which many of the subsequent chapters are based, Gulliver uses examples and case studies to lead the reader through the challenging issues of turbulence, mixing and mass transfer. The examples are wide ranging in situation, so enhancing the interest level. For example, similitude in heat transfer is explained through the thermal plume from a power plant, heat transfer is considered by examining ice formation on White Bear Lake in Minnesota, while plug flow with first- and zero-order source/sink terms is addressed using the classical Streeter–Phelps equation. These are just three from a list of more than 50 varied, challenging and interesting examples.
Chemical transport in the environment necessarily encompasses a vast syllabus. Gulliver accepts that the issues are rooted in a range of academic disciplines including chemistry, physics and biology, as well as more applied areas of chemical, civil and mechanical engineering, in addition to environmental science itself. As a result, the final text should be of interest to a broad readership. However, those who will gain most from it are likely to be academics (students and teachers) rather than practitioners—a fact the author accepts in his preface. Furthermore, the £50 price tag means that the book is likely to find itself on the shelves of academic staff, rather than the students they teach.
The author is a well-respected engineer with a wealth of appropriate experience from which he has been able to draw in order to produce this comprehensive and satisfying text. The book is nicely presented, with clear graphics and equations (of which there are, by necessity, many) and few typographical errors that so often blight a first edition. Overall, this text should find a natural home with teachers of environmental science in general and environmental fluid mechanics in particular.
