Mass transfer operations involve the separation of mixtures through the transport of mass from one location or phase to another, driven by a concentration or pressure difference. They account for a major portion of the costs in chemical process industries. Mass transfer occurs through diffusion or convection, and can be described using concepts of concentration, velocity, flux, and driving force. Common separation processes employ various separation agents to separate mixtures into their constituent components.
Mass transfer operations involve the separation of mixtures through the transport of mass from one location or phase to another, driven by a concentration or pressure difference. They account for a major portion of the costs in chemical process industries. Mass transfer occurs through diffusion or convection, and can be described using concepts of concentration, velocity, flux, and driving force. Common separation processes employ various separation agents to separate mixtures into their constituent components.
Mass transfer operations involve the separation of mixtures through the transport of mass from one location or phase to another, driven by a concentration or pressure difference. They account for a major portion of the costs in chemical process industries. Mass transfer occurs through diffusion or convection, and can be described using concepts of concentration, velocity, flux, and driving force. Common separation processes employ various separation agents to separate mixtures into their constituent components.
Mass transfer operations involve the separation of mixtures through the transport of mass from one location or phase to another, driven by a concentration or pressure difference. They account for a major portion of the costs in chemical process industries. Mass transfer occurs through diffusion or convection, and can be described using concepts of concentration, velocity, flux, and driving force. Common separation processes employ various separation agents to separate mixtures into their constituent components.
• Separation processes are the major class of processes in chemical process industries to separate the mixture (gas, liquid, solid). • Separation processes accounts 40-70% both capital and operating cost. (Some cases over 90%). • Separations may be solid-solid, solid-liquid, liquid-liquid, liquid-gas, gas-gas, gas-solid or combination of all three. • Some separation can be possible through purely mechanical mechanism and others can be separated using external agent, thermal energy or any other physical (physico-chemical) properties. • Separation processes based on principles of mass transfer are known as mass transfer operation. • Basically, mass transfer is the transport of a species from one point to another in a single phase or from one phase to another (generally difference in concentration or partial pressure) known as driving force. • The transfer of mass can be possible till the equilibrium is attend. • Larger the driving force, indicates higher rate of transport and it’s a measure of how far the system is from equilibrium. • Mass transfer may be diffusional or convective. • Diffusional mass transfer – occurs in absence of any macroscopic movement in the system. • Convective mass transfer – occurs with some sort of motion of component in the system. • Mass transfer is the transport process like heat and momentum transfer. Thus, basic governing laws of heat and momentum are applicable to mass transfer in different forms. • Mass transfer occurs through direct contact of components. Concentration • The concentration of a species in a solution is generally expressed in terms of one of the following: • i = ‘mass concentration’ of the species i (i.e. mass of i per unit volume of the solution or mixture), in kg/m3 (or lb/ft3) • = ‘total mass concentration’ of all the species in a solution, in kg/m3 (or lb/ft3); the total mass concentration is nothing but the density of the solution • wi = i/ = mass fraction of the species i in a solution • Ci = molar concentration of the species i in a solution, in kmol/m3 (or lbmol/ft3) • C = total molar concentration of the solution, in kmol/m3 (or lbmol/ft3) • xi = Ci/C = mole fraction of the species i in a solution. • If there are n species in a solution, we have the following relations.
• In a gas mixture, the ‘concentration’ of a species is more commonly expressed in
terms of its partial pressure pi, or the mole fraction, yi = pi/P, where P is the total pressure. Velocity • In a liquid solution or in a gaseous mixture, the various components or species move with different velocities. • By ‘velocity’ we mean both the molecular velocity in the microscopic scale and the bulk motion. By bulk motion we mean the motion in a fluid caused by a pressure difference. • A diffusing species moves with a velocity greater than the average velocity of the medium. • Two types of average velocities with respect to a ‘stationary observer’ are defined in this connection. Mass Average Velocity • In an n-component mixture, the mass average velocity u is defined as • where ui is the linear velocity of the ith species in the concerned direction. • The quantity ui does not mean the instantaneous velocity of a molecule of the component. • It is rather a statistical mean of the velocities of the molecules of component i in the given direction. Molar Average Velocity • Similarly, the molar average velocity of a mixture, U, is defined as • If the concentration of a solute in a solution is small, the contribution of the motion of the solute molecules to the average velocity also remains small. • Thus, the average velocity becomes virtually equal to the velocity of the medium or the solvent. • Again, if the molecular weights of all the species are equal, the mass and the molar average velocities are the same. Mass Flux and Molar Flux • In mass transfer operations, the term ‘flux’ means the net rate at which a species in a solution passes through a unit area, which is normal to the direction of diffusion, in unit time. • It is expressed in kg/m2·s, kmol/m2·s, or lbmol/ft2·h Figure – Role of separation processes in chemical industry Table – Separation processes, separation agents and typical industrial applications Problems 1. Calculate the mass concentration of 2 gram moles of sulpher dioxide to be used to manufacture sulfuric acid in a 0.20 m3 of reactor. 2. A gas mixture (N2 = 5%, H2 = 15%, NH3 = 76% and Ar = 4%) flows through a pipe, 25.4 mm in diameter, at 4.05 bar total pressure. If the velocities of the respective components are 0.03 m/s, 0.035 m/s, 0.03 m/s and 0.02 m/s, calculate the mass average, molar average and volume average velocities of the mixture. 3. A mixture of noble gases [helium, argon, krypton, and xenon] is at a total pressure of 100 kPa and a temperature of 200 K. If the mixture has equal kmole fractions of each of the gases, determine: a) The composition of the mixture in terms of mass fractions, b) Total molar concentration and c) The mass density. Data: Molecular weight of helium, argon, krypton, and xenon are 4, 40, 83.8 and 131.3 kg/mol respectively.
