REVIEWED BY STEWART WAY 1 THE author, who through his own pioneering contributions is eminently qualified, has brought out a most useful and welcome book on MHD power generation. The book is clearly written and will be useful to graduate students, practicing engineers, and MHD specialists. Greatest value will accrue by reading the book from .start to finish, but it will also be very valuable as a reference work. Chapter 1 introduces one to the elementary ideas of the MHD generator in simplest terms, with appropriate reference to the role and significance of the magnetic Reynolds number. Equilibrium ionization and conductivity are discussed in the second chapter, with consideration of the generalized ohm's law, Hall effects, and ion slip. Chapters 3 and 4 go into a thorough discussion of flow phenomena in the MHD generator, engineering consequences of the Hall effects, electrode segmentation, load circuits, finite electrode effects, and influence of nonuniformities in conductivity. An entire chapter is devoted to the most important subject of nonequilibrium ionization, the conditions for its realization, and the problems and difficulties it may lead to. Another chapter deals entirely with magnets, their optimization and coil design considerations, with discussion also of superconducting magnets. The last two chapters take up design and engineering considerations including brief but good treatments of sidewalls and electrodes. Power plant arrangements using MHD generators are also treated, including central station systems, rocket-driven generators for short bursts, and nuclear-heated plants for commercial and space power applications. Additional useful reference information on conductivity properties, physical constants, etc., is given in appendices. Though this book tends to be oriented more toward generators using seeded noble gases than combustion products, it is a quite general and lucid treatment of generator fundamentals and problems, and will therefore be highly useful to investigators of all types of MHD power systems.

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The conditions under which rothalpy is conserved are investigated by means of the energy and moment-of-momentum equations for unsteady flow of a viscous, compressible fluid. Differential and integral equations are given for the total enthalpy and rothalpy in both stationary and rotating coordinates. From the equations in rotating coordinates it is shown that rothalpy may change due to: (1) pressure fluctuations caused by flow unsteadiness in the rotating frame; (2) angular acceleration of the rotor; (3) work done by viscous stresses on the relative flow in the rotating frame; (4) work done by body forces on the relative flow; (5) changes in entropy due to viscous dissipation and heat transfer. Conclusions of this investigation are compared with those of previous authors, some of whom have stated that rothalpy is conserved even in viscous flows. A modified Euler’s turbomachine equation, which includes viscous effects, is derived and errors in previous derivations noted.

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