Sean Moran Chemical Engineer IChemE Book An Applied Guide to Process and Plant Design

My last IChemE book, "An Applied Guide to Process and Plant Design" seems to be selling well. I might be helping that Amazon are selling it at 60% of list price. I had to drop my own price on eBay. to match them, though Amazons don't come signed by the author.

I've spent a lot of the week writing an article for Process Industry Informer, where I now have a regular column, as well as a couple on plant layout and siting for Kirk-Othmer. I've also been doing the tiresome but necessary task of reviewing competing chemical engineering dictionaries. It has made clear to me the importance of proof reading, and knowing what you don't know. There are a lot of dodgy definitions, and even some misspellings. There is also of course a lot of irrelevant academic nonsense.

My writing methodology has up to nine stages of proof reading before I send to the publisher, and maybe three more after that. Halfway through I send it out in small sections to a large number of other practitioners in a wide range of industries all around the world. Even then they aren't perfect, but they are as good as I can make them with the resources available. This is precisely like engineering design. As good as possible, under the circumstances. With skill and experience, this is better than good enough.