Notes:

Reading for this lecture: Chapter 3.0—3.3

Reading for next lectures/week: Chapter 4 .0-4.3 (Follow the syllabus)

Based on the poll results, we will hold the following office hours schedule:

Monday 4-6pm (Katherine)

Tuesday 4-6pm (Amin)
Thursday 10am-12pm (Evan)

We do not have the room information yet, but we will post rooms as soon as we have them scheduled.
2.1. Units and Dimensions

2.3. Systems of Units

Mantissa = 405
Characteristic = 1
 CBE245
Introduction to Chemical and
Biochemical Engineering
Principles
Lecture 3: Chapter 3.0 – 3.3
Process and process variables
Definition of several process variables
Composition and flow rates
09/08/2021
Some questions we will address in this chapter:

• What are process variables and why are they important?

• What are the three different process flow diagrams?

• How to calculate composition and perform mass/mole conversion?

Why do humans synthesize, design, build and operate chemical and biochemical processes?

• To make a product that has a specific desired function

• To convert raw materials into useful products

• To improve the performance of a natural product

• To convert materials into energy

• To clean up the environment (water, air, soil)

Raw Materials (all are derived from earth):

Air – plentiful and cheap. What do we use air for?

Water – used as a reactant in many processes and also serves as a

solvent. What else? What might water be used for in the future?

Minerals – solid inorganic elements or compounds. They are the

feedstock for the inorganic chemicals industry. Think silicon industry.

Fossil fuels – natural gas, crude oil and coal. We use these for energy
and to create carbon-based products such as plastics.

Living organism – plants, animals, fungi, microbes. Of course, we

obtain food from these raw materials. We also obtain paper, wool,
cotton, medicines, etc.
Chemical and Biological Engineers Convert
Raw Materials into Products

Chemical Process

Biological Process
Process and Process Variables
Process and Process Variables
As a chemical engineer you will encounter many types of processes and will be asked to design, operate or
optimize a particular process (CBE Design Course)

What is a process?
Process: an operation or series of operations that causes a physical, chemical, or biological
change, thereby converting raw materials into products
Within any process there are process streams: input and output of a process unit; governed by conservation of
mass and energy: What goes in must come out!
input may also be called feed stream
output may also be called the product stream

Process flowsheet: Input-Output Diagram

INPUT OUTPUT
PROCESS UNIT

Process variables: variables to characterize the streams entering and leaving a process unit. What are some
important process variables? temperature, pressure, composition…
Let’s take a look at a few examples of processes:

Consider ice-cream making at your favorite place (Thomas Sweets, Bent Spoon, etc…)

Process flowsheet:

Cream
Sugar
Flavoring
Xi (composition)
Temperature Delicious Ice cream

Process unit: Ice cream maker

Process streams: input – cream, sugar, flavoring

output – ice cream
This is a batch process; it is characterized by chemical, biochemical, and physical changes
without materials moving in or out, except at the beginning and at the end of a cycle.

The ingredients are fed into the batch reactor at the beginning of the cycle; ice-cream is
removed at the end of the cycle.
 Ammonia synthesis

[Recall that this is one of the top ten chemical engineering achievements; ~175 million tons produced in 2016]

Chemical reaction: N2(g) + 3H2(g) → 2NH3(g)

N2 NH3
H2 Reactor N2
H2

If the previous example was a batch process, what type of process is the above?
It is a continuous process and is characterized by chemical and physical changes with material continuously moving
in and out
Process variables in this example includes:
50% of N atoms in
• Temperature of the inlet and outlet streams your body have
• Pressure of the inlet and outlet streams gone through a
• Compositions of the inlet and outlet streams Haber-Bosch reactor
• Total amount of material in the inlet and outlet streams
 Process flow diagrams present a large amount of technical information about the process
Input-Output Diagram
Ammonia Synthesis

Process Flow Diagram

Block Flow Diagram
Multiple unit operations (steps in the process)
 Materials as process variables
As in the previous example, most process streams consist of a mixture of liquids or gases, or solution of one or more solutes
in a liquid solvent.

* When discussing composition as a process variable we must think in terms of mass, volume, density, moles, etc.

density ≡ mass per unit volume; has dimensions of mass/length3 [=] g/cm3; kg/m3; lbm/ft3

What can you do with density? Use it to determine volume of a given mass or vice versa…

Density – a material property but depends on T, P.

How does density change with T and P?

example: Density (ρ) of water at 4oC, 1 atm = 1.00000 g/cm3

Density of water (liquid) at 0oC, 1 atm = 0.999868 g/cm3
Density of water (liquid) at 100oC, 1 atm = 0.95838 g/cm3

Water – an “anomaly”; volume expands as you cool from 4 to 0oC

* Most pure compounds – density decreases with increasing temperature (volume expansion)

* Density of many pure compounds, solutions, and mixtures can be found in

standard references including the back of your text book.
Regarding density, in this class we will make the following assumptions (remember, get comfortable making
assumptions!):

• solids and liquids are incompressible, so density is constant with pressure

• gases and vapors are compressible, so density changes with pressure

Specific volume ≡ volume occupied by a unit mass of the substance; has dimensions of length3/mass
(reciprocal density)

Specific gravity ≡ the ratio of the density of a substance to a reference density of a reference substance at
specific conditions; dimensionless

r(T, P)
SG º
rref ( T , P)

For solids and liquids, the most common reference is water at 4oC, 1 atm:

ρwater(l) (4oC, 1 atm) = 1.000 g/cm3 = 1000. kg/m3 = 62.43 lbm/ft3

Typically, specific gravity is expressed as:

o 20oC = T of sub.
SG = 0.6 4 20
o
4oC = T of ref.
“the specific gravity of X at 20oC with reference to water at 4oC is 0.6”
 What is a mole?

“mole” = Latin for heap of pile

A certain amount of material corresponding to a specific number of molecules, atoms, electrons, or any specified type
of particles
Like a ”dozen” means 12

Official definition: the amount of a substance that contains as many entities as there are atoms in 12 gm of carbon.
Number of entities = 6.023 · 1023 atoms

g-mole (mol) – amount of substance whose mass is expressed in grams; is equivalent to the molecular weight of the
substance (in grams)

Example: CO has a molecular weight of 28 gm/mol: 1 mol of CO contains 28 gm of CO and 1 mol of CO contains 6.023 ·
1023 molecules of CO CGS SI American
g kg lbm
mol kmol lb-mole
g/mol kg /kmol lbm/lb-mole
Defining Composition:

A mass fraction is the mass of particular compound in a mixture divided by the total mass
mass$of$A k $A g$A lbm$ A
xA = $[=]$ g $[ = ]$ $[ = ]$
total$mass total$k g total$g total$lbm
mole fraction:
moles&of&A k mol&A gmol&A lbmmol&A
yA = &[=]& g &[ = ]& &[ = ]&
total&moles total&k gmol total&gmol total%lbmmol

volume fraction:
volume of A m3 A cm3 A ft3 A
vA = [=] 3
[=] 3
[=]
total volume total m total cm total ft 3

* Fractions are unitless!

Generalizations:

• solids and liquids generally go by mass or mole fractions

• gases and vapors generally go by mole or volume fractions
Chemical engineers are not only interested in content (composition) but are also
interested in quantity as most processes involve the movement of material from one
point to another.

Where is material moved? Between process units or between production facilities, etc..

We are interested in the rate at which materials are being transported through the
process line.

mass
 ≡$
mass$flow$rate$ = m
time
volume
volumetric+flow+rate+ = +V ≡
time
Suppose a fluid (gas or liquid) flows in a cylindrical pipe shown below, and the shaded
area represents a section perpendicular to flow. If the mass flow rate is known, then
every sec m kilograms pass through the area. If the volumetric flow rate is known, then
every second V cubic meters of fluid pass through the area. Are the two m and V
independent?
Mass flow rate must be known for
m m many calculations, yet in practice
Density = ρ ≡ ≡
V V volumetric flow rate is measured.
Lets look at an example:

How many of each of the following are contained within 100 gm of CO2?
Mw = 44.01 g/mol (44.01 lbm/lb-mol, 44.01 kg /kmol)

1molCO2
a) mol of CO2? 100.0gm ⋅ = 2.273molCO2
44.01gmCO2

1lbm 1lbmol
b) lb-moles of CO2? 100.0gm ⋅ ⋅ = 5.011⋅10 −3 lbmolCO2
453.6gm 44.01lbm

1molCO2 2molO
c) mol of O? 100.0gm ⋅ ⋅ = 4.546molO
44.01gm 1molCO2

6.02 ⋅10 23 molecules

d) molecules of CO2? 2.273molCO2 ⋅ = 1.37 ⋅10 24 molecules
1mol
Example: Conversion between mass fraction and mole fraction

An industrial-strength drain cleaner contains 5.00 kg of water and 5.00 kg of NaOH. What
are the mass fractions and mole fractions of each component in the drain container?

You are giving the masses, so it is easy to calculate the mass fractions.

xH2O = 5kg / 10 kg = 0.5

xNaOH = 5kg / 10 kg = 0.5

The masses have to be converted in moles, so that mole fractions can be determined.
Conversion of masses to moles….. 5.00kgH O ⋅
1kgmolH 2O
= 0.278kgmolH O
2 2
18.0kgH 2O

1kgmolNaOH
5.00kgNaOH ⋅ = 0.125kgmolNaOH
40.0kgNaOH

Calculate mass and mole fractions…..

yH2O = 0.278 / (0.278 + 0.125) = 0.69
yNaOH = 0.125 / (0.278 + 0.125) = 0.31
Example : A mixture of gases has the following composition by mass:
O2 16%
CO 4.0%
CO2 17%
N2 63%
What is the molar composition?
Set a basis of 100 gm of mixture

Mass fraction of O2 = 16/100 = 0.16 = Xo2

Mass of O2 = mo2 = Xo2 * mtotal = 0.16 *100 = 16 gm

Mol of O2 = no2 = mo2/Mwo2 = 16gm / 32gmmol-1 = 0.5 mol

Perform the same calculations for CO, CO2, and N2

Mol of CO = 0.143
Mol of CO2 = 0.386
Mol of N2 = 2.250

Total moles = molCO + molCO2 + molN2 + molO2 = 3.279

Molar composition = yi = ni/ntotal

yO2 = 0.5/3.279 = 0.150; yCO = 0.044; yCO2 = 0.120; yN2 = 0.690
 Some Process Variables in Biological Engineering
Base pair (bpm, Kbp) DNA Sequence
Central Dogma of Biology

Codon

Protein Sequence
Protein MW = MWArg + MWGly + MWAla + … [=] KDa [=] Kg/mol
50 KDa = 50,000 g/mol
Chapter 4
4.0-4.3