Communicating in acronyms
I finally got around to reading the May 2016 issue of Chemical Engineering. I was fascinated with the editorial [p.5].
I have been an engineer since 1968 and in the EH&S (environmental, health and safety) field since the mid 1970s. We engineers and scientists, always looking for a better way to do things, came up with using acronyms. To say the least, it has gotten out of hand.
In the mid-1980s, I was tasked by my employer with developing a list of acronyms for those working in environmental. It quickly expanded to EH&S. In the late 1990s, as keeper of the list, I decided to expand it into the energy field and then engineering in general. After I left my employer and set up my own business. I continued to maintain the list and have expanded it further. Most of my inputs come from people to whom I send the list. I make the list and updates available to anyone who requests them at no charge.
Keep up the excellent work. It is a real pleasure to read Chemical Engineering.
Arnold Feldman
JJDS Environmental, Doylestown,
Pa., 18901 ([email protected])
Postscripts, corrections
June, 2016, “Rapid Prediction of Prandtl Number of Compressed Air”, pp. 52–59. The coefficients in Table 1 on p. 53 were missing the exponent multipliers. The corrected Table 1 is given above, and in the online version of the article. Thanks to Jesse Williams at Johnson Matthey Inc. for finding this error.
Also on p. 53, the following sentences are missing a citation, which is included below.
“Unlike the Reynolds and Grashof numbers, the Prandtl number contains no length scale in its definition, so Pr is dependent only on the fluid involved and the state of the fluid. As such, Prandtl numbers are often found in property tables alongside other properties such as viscosity and thermal conductivity.” (Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prandtl_number, accessed June, 2016)