CBE 40 Midterm Review: Week 6

GSI: Michelle Liu

Wednesday 9
th
October, 2013
1 Concepts to Understand
1.1 Drawing PFDs
PFD conventions and ow sheet rules (guide is on bSpace)
Label streams
Use splitters and mixers. Dont feed a recycle stream directly into a reactor.
Go left to right (only loop around if you reach the end of a page)
In L/G separator, have L come out bottom and G come out top
Know what unit operations you can use and rules associated with them (for example, splitters
preserve wt% and mol%)
Dierence between batch, semibatch, and continuous process and their respective advantages
(more precise control of output for batch; more scalability in semibatch)
1.2 Separations
By phase: condensation, evaporation, crystallization, distillation (rare cases sublimation)
By size: ltration, membranes (liquid or gas)
By anity (chromatography, adsorption, absorption, leaching)
Other (solubility dierences, density dierences (i.e. centrifugation)
Remember for liquid/solid separations that solids usually leave with some entrained liquid
(need a drying step)
1.3 Mass balances
General balance for anything (ALWAYS TRUE):
(Accumulation) = (Input) (Output) + (Generation) (Consumption) (1)
Start with the general balance (makes no assumptions) and cross out terms (set them equal
to 0) depending on what thing (mass, moles, volume, energy, charge, etc.) you are tracking
Accumulation
Steady state or transient operation? (usually it is steady state for a continuous process)
At steady state, no accumulation (by denition) (Accumulation) = 0
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CBE 40 Midterm Review
Generation and consumption terms
What are you balancing? Overall mass vs. overall moles vs. mass or moles of individual
species (sometimes volume if using ideal gas law)
For overall mass balance, (Generation) = (Consumption) = 0 and Equation (1) becomes:
(Accumulation) = (Input) (Output)
dM
dt
= m
in
m
out
(2)
where M is mass in your system and m represents a ow rate (mass/time)
If the reactions in the system are ALL equimolar, (# moles consumed) = (# moles formed),
then Equation (2) also applies for overall mole balance. Must have a balanced reaction.
Also no generation or consumption for total number of atoms (no particle physics), and
for some other quantities (see class notes)
Read the given information carefully to know which terms you can set to zero!
Reactions
Usually to track individual species
For species i:
dM
i
dt
= m
i,in
m
i,out
+ r
i
(= 0 if steady state) (3)
where r
i
= (Generation) (Consumption) is a rate (mass/time or moles/time)
Often in reactions we track moles, but you can use molar masses to convert between moles
and mass
Use stoichiometry to relate changes in moles of reactants and products across a reactor
If reaction goes to completion, determine which reactant is limiting and which are in
excess (using stoichiometry with balanced reaction)
Conversion dened as (change in reactant)/(original amount):

i
=
F
i,0
F
i
F
i,0
(4)
Equilibrium ratio of products can be written in terms of species ow rates
When solving mass balances
Start with what you know and gure out what you are being asked to nd (sometimes
dont care about inside streams, for example)
Use good notation so that you can see how ow rates relate to each other. Convention is
F
C,i
for ow rate of component C in stream i
See what you can nd as a result of what you already know take it step by step
Draw your control volumes (can be around the entire system or one unit operator) and
apply the appropriate forms of Equation (1) to get to what you want to nd
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CBE 40 Midterm Review
1.4 Optimizing a process
Minimize materials, energy, equipment, waste
Add recycle streams to increase material usage ecientlyrecycle streams will usually increase
conversion
Sell pure materials that you dont use
Follow a reactant with the conversion, dened in Equation (4)
Determine the limiting and excess reactant
1.5 Design & Analysis
Integrates drawing PFDs, mass balances, and process optimization
Have a goal in mind (produce some species to some purity)
Be sure to follow regulations and protocols (real life)
Start by guring out what reactions and separation schemes you can use
Draw the basic owsheet rst, then optimize
Pay attentiont to evaluation criteria (dierent in every situation)
1.6 Economics
Prot = Cost Revenue, or (Profit/year) = (Cost/year) (Revenue/year) for continuous
process
(Revenue) = (Quantity sold) (Price per unit)
Two types of cost: capital costs and operating costs
Capital costs: one-time costs, units of $, NOT included when calculating prot per year
Operating costs: ongoing costs, units of $/time, includes expenses and depreciation
Expense = Personnel + Product + Taxes
Depreciation: can be understood as the opportunity cost of not selling your equipment;
in this class we usually assume linear depreciation,
Depreciation =
Capital Cost
Equipment Lifetime
Return on Investment (ROI) is the criteria to use to determine which is the best nancial
option (why is prot not the criteria?):
ROI =
Prot
Capital Cost
Economics of scale: Its usually more cost-eective to build one large facility than several small
ones because of the way that costs scale with unit capacity
What makes a good product: valuable, high quality, purity, durability
What determines market price: prot margin, substitute good, perceived value
Goals of a chemical processes: $$ (and also social/environmental good, but many of those
things can be measured in terms of money)
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CBE 40 Midterm Review
2 Possible Study Schedule
Thursday-Friday: Work though past discussion problems and mark areas or steps that are
confusing. See what concepts you are missing by comparing your homework to the solutions
(all on bSpace)
Saturday: Read book to clarify dicult concepts; start on practice problems if you have time
Sunday: Work on practice problems, focusing on the type(s) that you nd most dicult. I
nd it helpful to make myself an outline of concepts that I had trouble with.
Monday: Come to oce hours (11am12pm in Hildebrand F; 3:404:30pm and extra problem
solving session from 4:306pm in Hildebrand E) to clarify nal questions and see problems
worked out. Do the rest of the practice problems on your own. GO TO SLEEP EARLY!
3 Good Exam Habits
Get enough sleep! It is important to do lots of problems and review the material, but you are
not ecient when you are sleep-deprived and you want to be attentive for the exam
Give yourself time to eat breakfast (dont try any new foods, though)
Bring a watch (NO CELL PHONES and the clock in the lecture hall does not work)
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