Mono-Olefins: Chemistry and Technology is a translation from the German and deals with the study of olefins from low ethylene to hexenes and olefins from the high hexenes to eicosenes. The book describes the gaseous or low-boiling olefins and the higher, normally liquid olefins (which have only a minor role in applications in the chemical industry). The olefins are considered important as they are added in the distillation of off-gases in refineries. Although the liquid olefins are used sparingly, these are needed to manufacture lubricants, synthetic detergents, and the higher aliphatic alcohols. The book then explains the three processes used to separate olefin containing mixtures of gases into fractions by the C-number or to convert olefins in the pure state: distillation, absorption, and adsorption. The author then describes the processes in manufacturing carburetor fuel from petroleum and natural gases. Petroleum oil is a mixture of paraffinic, naphthenic, and aromatic hydrocarbons and has no olefins. The text describes the complete process of refining petroleum into different products such as gasoline, kerosene, lubricants, and spotting benzenes. Then the book explains the polymerization of olefins to produce carburetor fuels either by the thermal method or catalytic method. The text notes some research made into double-bond isomerization in mono-olefins and their possible applications. This book is beneficial to industrial chemists, researchers, technical designers, and engineers whose works are related with oil refinery and fossil fuels.

Of all major branches of organic chemistry, I think none has undergone such a rapid, even explosive, development during the past twenty-five years as organic photochemistry. Prior to about 1960, photochemistry was still widely regarded as a branch of physical chemistry which might perhaps have oc casional applications in the generation of free radicals. Strangely enough, this attitude to the subject had developed despite such early signs of promise as the photodimerization of anthracene first observed by Fritzsche in 1866, and some strikingly original pioneering work by Ciamician and Silber in the early years of this century. These latter workers first reported such varied photo reactions as the photoisomerization of carvenone to carvone camphor, the photodimerization of stilbene, and the photoisomerization of o-nitrobenzal dehyde to o-nitrosobenzoic acid; yet organic chemists continued for another fifty years or so to rely almost wholly on thermal rather than photochemical methods of activation in organic synthesis-truly a dark age. When my colleagues and I first began in the 1950s to study the synthetic possibilities of photoexcitation in the chemistry of benzene and its derivatives, virtually all the prior reports had indicated that benzene was stable to ultraviolet radiation. Yet I think it fair to say that more different types of photoreactions than thermal reactions of the benzene ring are now known. Comparable growth of knowledge has occurred in other branches of organic photochemistry, and photochemical techniques have in particular made possible or simplified the synthesis of numerous highly strained organic molecules.

Photophysical and Photochemical Properties of Aromatic Compounds is the first book to collect and classify all available quantitative data on the photochemistry and luminescence of aromatic compounds. Compounds are classified by both spectral-luminescent (e.g., extinction coefficients, energies and lifetimes of lower excited states) and photochemical properties. In addition, all of the quantum yields available have been collected. The variety of photochemical reactions of aromatics is examined based on eight types of elementary monomolecular and bimolecular photochemical processes. Aromatic compounds are grouped into eight categories, and the book analyzes the possibilities of occurrence of all types of elementary photoprocesses.