Gupta Releases Second Book

Ram Gupta

Ram B. Gupta

Ram B. Gupta, alumni professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering recently released his second book, "Solubility in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide." The book is a professional reference text for use in designing supercritical fluid processes in chemical, food, pharmaceutical, nanotechnology and environmental engineering.

"About eight years ago, when designing nanomedicine using supercritical fluid, we found that solubility data was not readily available," Gupta said. "Hence, we started to compile this information."

After the team began putting together information, they were surprised when requests started pouring in from other engineers who also needed the data. Eventually, the research team decided the most useful process would be to publish the findings, so they developed a text that would present the information in consistent units and format so that for the first time, comparison would be simple. They also provided experimental data, rather than empirical, theoretically correlated, or predicted values. The text is recognized as the most complete source of published carbon dioxide solubility data, cataloging more than 780 solutes in 1,200 tables.

Ram B. Gupta"Mostly, it will be used by engineers and scientists in the industry. Supercritical fluids processes are replacing older processes due to improvement in the product quality and reduction in pollution," Gupta says. "Decaffeination of coffee is now done using supercritical carbon dioxide. Teflon is being produced in supercritical carbon dioxide. The applications are open and endless, and will become even more necessary in the future."

The 960-page book, which took six years to complete, is published by CRC Press and is available at CRC Press or Amazon.com.