Can anybody tell me what are the advantages and disadvantages of the different discretisation schemes in start (both first and second order) and what types of flow each are suitable for. Or if you cant tell me, point me at a book.

I would recommend you to take a first course in fluid dynamics and read a book on the subject (say, J. Ferziger and M. Peric, Computational Methods for Fluid Dynamics).

In general, one should never use first order schemes for anything ! (a first order scheme is e.g. upwind differencing) Sometimes, in practice, one is forced to use first order schemes for some quantities in order to obtain converged solution. But that should never be done for the velocities (momemtum).

i know how to use cfd fairly well, i am doing a PhD in it for a start, what i was looking for really was a refference that details specifically advantages and disadvantages and suitability of the schemes. The Star methadology is fine for the mathematical side of it but doest really give and details on the relative merits and the applicability.

Try with "Numerical simulation of internal and external flows" by C.Hirsh. It is a quite old book and does not contain Star schemes, but is has a wide variety of other schemes, explanes what TVD schemes are, stability etc. Hope this hels