BOOK REVIEW — Industrial minerals reference commendable

Industrial Minerals and their Uses: A Handbook and Formulary Peter Ciullo – editor, US$86, Noyes Data Corporation, Westwood, N.J. 07675

Technical handbooks are utterly without glamor. Thick, with dull covers and mundane titles, they distinguish themselves only as they age: the good ones develop dog ears more readily, since they are opened again and again.

Specialty publishing house Noyes Data has made an honest living cranking out reference books such as these, in a series of no-nonsense, timely volumes on specialized subjects from contaminated groundwater to alkali-reactive aggregates. Peter Ciullo’s Industrial Minerals and their Uses is a welcome addition to the genre, providing solid information on its subject in a straightforward format that saves the busy engineer much time and trouble.

The author starts with a quick, but accurate, primer on silicate chemistry, followed by a chapter consisting of entries that detail the mineralogy, types and uses of each industrial mineral. Ciullo, a mineral chemist, has limited his book to the production and uses of the minerals, and so avoids tackling the geology of industrial mineral deposits.

The meat of the book is a series of chapters on the uses of mineral materials in nine different industrial sectors, including papermaking, plastics, pesticides and ceramics. Each chapter has been written by a different author or team of authors, but a firm editorial hand has kept the treatments remarkably uniform. Better still, the language is clearer and less stiff — chattier, even — than might have been expected from specialists. As a result,

the subject matter is readily accessible to scientists and engineers from outside the chemical industry.

The work also includes a formulary for some typical plastics, paints, adhesives and rubber compounds, useful to any professional in need of a general

idea of what goes into common industrial materials. Environmental site assessors, particularly, will benefit from having a copy of this book on hand, as

they will be able to look up the likely contents of that mysterious drum in the basement.

Furnished with a comprehensive index, the book provides a valuable work of reference for the producer and user of industrial minerals, and will also prove handy to anyone in need of a quick study of some common industrial processes.