Material Balance
Intro
Upon studying this section, you should be familiar
with the following:
o How to use the Mass Balance Equation for
reactive and nonreactive chemical processes.
o Be able identify a process as either a Batch or
Continuous.
o Write a Flow Chart with the information given in
a problem statement.
o Write a Table after writing a flow chart.
o Use the principle of Degrees of Freedom to the
extent only of writing boundaries which will allow
you to write the maximum number of equations.
A Material Balance Intro
Explanation:
Chemical processes are often very elaborate, with many types of
equipment used to obtain a desired product. Chemical engineers
are interested in many of the physical parameters associated with
each process, such as the flow rate of material that enters and
leaves a piece of equipment, as well as several other parameters
including the temperature of the material, and the pressure exerted
by material. Learning to keep track of the materials and their
physical properties in chemical processes is the objective of this
course.
For material balances, you will be expected to be able to perform
balances on single and multiple pieces of equipment, as well as on
processes that have recycle and bypass streams. Later on in the
course, you'll need to be able to do balances for processes that
include reactors where the number of atoms of each species is
changing. We keep track of the material in the process with flow
charts.
Each flow chart has boxes that physically represent pieces of
equipment (distillation columns that can be several stories tall, or
huge tank heaters, etc.) and streams (arrows) that physically
represent pipes. Keeping track of the amount of material in each
stream is the objective of this chapter.
The following are examples of flow charts:
Simple single and multiple unit processes (the purpose of each
process could be to purify A (say, an alcohol) from B (say, water)
(thus giving a more concentrated alcohol)):
Recycle and Bypass processes: (the purpose of the recycle stream
could be to reuse A, say water, and the purpose of the bypass would
be to have some B, such as a natural juice, skip the process to give
the final produce better flavoring.)
A reaction process:
The Mass Balance Equation
The Complete Equation:
In - Out + Generation - Consumption = Build-up
This reads: what goes in minus what comes out plus what was
generated minus what g was consumed equals what is left over in
the box.
An example could use population, so let's say we want to apply this
equation to a ship wreck where many people were stranded on an
island for a number of years. The "In" refers to the population
entering the island; the "Out" refers to the leaving population; the
generation term represents any children born; and the consumption
term accounts for those who died.
To get back to chemical engineering, in and out in our case would
refer to the inlet and outlet streams of the piece of equipment,
while the generation and consumption terms refer to the products
and reactants of a chemical reaction. The Build-up term (often
called accumulation) is the material that has accumulated in the
piece of equipment.
When there is no build-up (Accumulation = 0):
In - Out + Generation - Consumption = 0
and we say that we are at steady state. There won't be any
problems that include a build-up term in this class until the very end
(but there will be in other follow-up courses).
No chemical reaction:
In - Out + 0 - 0 = 0, or In = Out
If there are no chemical reactions present and no build up, what
enters the piece of equipment leaves it.
Batch and Continuous Processes
definitions and examples:
Process Definition Example
System empties or fills from some
Batch making cookies
time onward
Continuo
System does not empty or fill a power plant
us
Semi- continuous process that stopsand pumping gas,
Batch starts digesting food
For the most part, we will be doing balances on only continuous
processes.
Flow Charts
Explanation:
In this course, you will be asked to take a complex problem
statement with some information and be expected to find unknown
quantities. The first step in this process, after reading the problem
statement, is to turn the problem into a picture, or a flow chart.
Examples of flow charts were given above in the Intro section.
Degrees of Freedom
Explanation:
There are two main points here: The first has to do with drawing
"balance boundaries", that is, the number of systems where you can
write the Material Balance Equation. There are three rules for
drawing system boundries:
1. Draw a boundary around each process unit.
2. Draw a boundary around junction points.
3. Draw a bounadry around the entire process (unless there is
only one boundry).
The second point has to do with how many equations you can write
for each drawn boundary. You can write as many equations as you
there are unique components passing through the boundary (Often,
it is not necessary to write the equations if you are using a table to
solve for the unknowns like we will do throughout this course.
However, understanding when you can write equations is important
when you have to solve a system of equations or when you are
dealing with reactions). Examples at the end of the section will help
explain what we are talking about here.
Setting up a Table
Explanation:
Material balance problems can be solved by listing and solving a
series of equations, or by use of a table where we keep track of
information. Using a table keeps your information organized and
allows you to work through a problem without have to write and
solve so many equations. So, you will learn to use the table, but you
can't solve two equations and two unknowns with a table. It will be
therefore important to learn to recognize when it is required to
solve a system of equations using the table method.
To set up a table, you first need an accurate flow chart before you
do a boundary analysis (See Degree of Freedom section above). The
columns of the table will represent the unique species in the
process while the rows will repressent the streams.
Below, the examples only show how to set up a table.
An Example
Explanation:
Again, chemical engineers are intimately concerned with the
movement of fluids and materials. In this chapter, we begin to learn
systematic methods of keeping track of exactly how much we have
in each stream. To do this, we set up flow charts of real processes
and then perform the mathematics. Here, take the second flow
chart given in the intro section above where we want to do the
following:
draw balance boundries
write the number of unique equations and/or set up table
This example exercises the first steps of the solution process for the
rest of the problems you will encounter in this course.
Here, we will use the flow chart given above.
We can see that we have a total of 5 boundaries (3 process units, 1
junction, and 1 big boundary for the whole process. For each, we
can write our balance equations). We also needed to label each
stream.
For the first boundary, we can write to following equations (four
equations in total, but just three are unique because the fourth one
is the sum of the other three. So, in doing the math, we have our
choice on which of the three equations we want to use).
A: F1,A = F2,A + F3,A
B: F1,B = F2,B
C: F1,C = F2,C + F3,C
Total: F1,total = F2,total + F3,total
Boundary 2: (3 components, so we could use 3 of the following
equations)
A: F2,A = F5,A + F4,A
B: F2,B = F5,B
C: F2,C = F5,c + F4,C
Total: F2,total = F5,total + F4,total
Boundary 3: (there are 2 components, so we could use 2 of the
following equations):
A: F3,A + F4,A = F6,A + F7,A
C: F3,C + F4,C = F6,C + F7,C
Total: F3,total + F4,total = F6,total + F7,total
The Complete Process Boundary: (there are 3 components, so
we could use 3 of the following equations)
A: F1,A = F5,A + F6,A + F7,A
B: F1,B = F5,B
C: F1,C = F5,C + F6,C + F7,C
Total: F1,total = F5,total + F6,total + F7,total
And we could set up our table to keep track of information in the following way:
strea
A B C Total
ms
F1 . . . .
F2 . . . .
F3 . . . .
F4 . . . .
F5 . . . .
F6 . . . .
F7 . . . .
Here, I would like to make one point about the significance of the
equations written in this example. Problems in this course will often
be solved just using the table because it is so useful, allowing us to
possibly not have to write as many equations. However, not all
problems can be solved this way. Many problems will require that
we solve simultaneous equations. Processes involving reactions
require that we are able to write equations around boundaries in
addition to being able to set up extents of reaction equations.
Lastly, while tables will be used in this course to solve problems, all
the problems can be solved by writing out and solving the
equations.
So, in choosing whether to use the Table Method or to Solve
Equations in completing material flow problems, I offer these three
comments:
All problems can be worked out and solved by writing and
solving the equations.
If problems don't require the solving of simultaneous
equations, a table method of solving is an excellent and
efficient way of finishing quickly.
In any case, a table should always be used to keep track of
stream information and intermediate answers.
Example:
Repeat the above problem for the first flow chart given above, and
for the reaction flow chart.