PGE 405-PRINCIPLES OF PLANT DESIGN

MATERIAL BALANCES

ENGR JOSEPH CHIOR

 INTRODUCTION
• To make a material balance (or an energy balance ) for a
process, you need to specify what the system is and outline its
boundaries.
• A process is one or a series of actions or operations or
treatments that result in an end product.
• Chemical engineering focuses on operations that cause
physical and chemical change in materials.
• Innumerable textbooks and reference books gives examples of
processes as
• Chemical manufacture
• Fluid transport
• Handling of bulk solids
• Size reduction and enlargement
• Heat generation and transport
• Distillation
• Gas absorption
• Bioreactions
 Terminologies
• By system we mean any arbitrary portion or whole of a
process set out specifically for analysis.
• Figure 2.1 shows a system in which flow and reaction
take place; note particularly that the system boundary
is formally circumscribed about the process itself to call
attention to the importance of carefully delineating the
system in each problem you work.
• An open (or flow) system is one in which material is
transferred across the system boundary, that is, enters
the system, leaves the system, or both.
• A closed (or batch) system is one in which there is no
such transfer during the time interval of interest.
• Obviously, if you charge a reactor with reactants and
take out the products, and the reactor is designated as
the system, material is transferred across the system
boundary.
• But you might ignore the transfer, and focus attention
solely on the process of reaction that takes place only
after charging is completed and before the products
are withdrawn.
• Such a process would occur within a closed system.
• A material balance is nothing more than an
accounting for material flows and changes in
inventory of material for a system(Fig. 2.2)
• Equation (2.1) describes in words the
principle of the material balance applicable to
processes both with and without chemical
reaction:
• As a generic term, material balance can refer to a
balance on a system for the
1. Total mass
2. Total moles
3. Mass of a chemical compound
4. Mass of an atomic species
5. Moles of a chemical compound
6. Moles of an atomic species
7. Volume (possibly)
• With respect to a total mass balance, the
generation and consumption terms are zero
whether a chemical reaction occurs in the
system or not (we neglect the transfer
between mass and energy in ordinary
chemical processing); hence
accumulation = input - output (2.2)
• With respect to a balance on the total moles,
if a chemical reaction does occur, you will
most likely will have to take into account the
generation or consumption terms.
• In the absence of chemical reaction, the
generation and consumption terms do not
apply to a single chemical compound such as
water or acetone; with a chemical reaction
present in the system, the terms do apply.
• From the viewpoint of both a mass balance or
a mole balance for elements themselves, such
as C, H, or O, the generation and consumption
terms are not involved in a material balance.
• Finally, Eq. (2.1) should not be applied to a
balance on a volume of material unless ideal
mixing occurs and the densities of the streams
are the same.
• In Eq. (2.1) the accumulation term refers to a change in
mass or moles (plus or minus) within the system with
respect to time.
• Whereas the transfers through the system boundaries
refer to inputs to and outputs of the system.
• If Eq. (2.1) is written in symbols so that the variables
are functions of time, the equation so formulated
would be a differential equation.
• As an example, the differential equation for the O2
material balance for the system illustrated in Fig. 2.1
might be written as
• where nO2 within system denotes the moles of oxygen
within the system boundary, and 𝑛𝑜2 denotes the rate
at which oxygen enters, leaves or reacts, respectively,
as indicated by the subscript.
• Each term in the differential equation represents a rate
with the units of, say, moles per unit time.
• Problems formulated as differential equations with
respect to time are called unsteady-state (or transient)
problems.
• In contrast, in steady-state problems the values of the
variables in the system do not change with time, hence
the accumulation term in Eq. (2.1) is zero by definition.
• For convenience in treatment we use an
integral balance form of Eq. (2.1).
• What we do is to take as a basis a time period
such as one hour or minute, and integrate Eq.
(2.1a) with respect to time.
• The derivative (the left hand side) in the
differential equation becomes
• where ∆𝑛 is the difference in the 𝑛𝑜2 within
the system at t2 less that at t1.
• A term on the right hand side of the
differential equation becomes, as for example
the first term,
• If no accumulation occurs in a problem, and
the generation and consumption terms can be
omitted from consideration, the material
balances reduce to the very simple relation
• Material balances can be made for a wide
variety of materials, at many scales of size for
the system and in various degrees of
complication.
• In the process industries, material balances
assist in the planning for process design, in the
economic evaluation of proposed and existing
processes, in process control, and in process
optimization.
• For example, in the extraction of soybean oil from
soybeans, you could calculate the amount of solvent
required per ton of soybeans or the time needed to fill
up the filter press, and use this information in the
design of equipment or in the evaluation of the
economics of the process.
• All sorts of raw materials can be used to produce the
same end product, and quite a few different types of
processing can achieve the same end result, so that
case studies (simulations) of the processes can assist
materially in the financial decisions that must be made.
• Material balances are also used in the hourly and daily
operating decisions of plant managers.
• If there are one or more points in a process where it is
impossible or uneconomical to collect data, then if
sufficient 'other data are available, by making a material
balance on the process it is possible to get the information
you need about the quantities and compositions at the
inaccessible location.
• In most plants a mass of data is accumulated in data bases
on the quantities and compositions of raw materials,
intermediates, wastes products, and by-products that is
used by the production and accounting departments, and
that can be integrated into a revealing picture of company
operations.