Course Outline

ChE 117: Separation Processes

October December 2014
Instructor: Dr. Xin Ge (Bourns Hall B309; xge@engr.ucr.edu; 827-6229)
TA: Xiaobo Zhu (toticzhu@gmail.com)
Catalog description: Fundamental concepts and practical techniques for designing equipment
based on equilibrium stage processes such as gas-liquid absorption, distillation, liquid-liquid
extraction, solid-liquid extraction, humidification, drying, andmembrane processes.
Prerequisites:
CHE 130. Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics
CHE 120. Mass Transfer
CHE 116. Heat Transfer
Text Book:
Separation Process Principles Chemical and Biochemical Operations, third edition, by
Seader, Henley, Roper
Reference Books:
Unit Operations Of Chemical Engineering 7th Edition by McCabe And Smith, McGraw Hill
Coulson and Richardsons Chemical Engineering Vol 2 (Particle Technology and Separation
Processes) 5th Edition by Coulson, Richardson, and Backhurst, 2002 Elsevier.
Principles of Bioseparations Engineering by Ghosh, 2006 World Scientific Publishing
Company
Other materials: Reprints of journal articles to help understanding the principles and introduce
ongoing research in the area of chemical and biochemical separations.
Relevance:
Separation processes is an essential building block of chemical engineering. They involve in
almost any chemical process for the removal of contaminants from feed, waste, and recycled
streams, and the separation of valuable products from wastes, impurities, and by-products.
These separation processes account for 50 to 90% of the capital costs of most chemical plants
and about 70% of the ultimate product cost. Separation processes also play an important role in
biological organisms, ecosystems, and environmental engineering.
This course requires you to integrate the principles learned in your previous thermodynamics
(CHE130) and mass and heat transfer courses (CHE 120,116) for systems design to reach a
desired objective (the separation of a given mixture). These abilities are useful not only in future
courses (especially process control and senior design) but will be valuable throughout your
career in either traditional or non-traditional chemical engineering applications. Additionally, this
course provides an introduction to current research in separation processes, that is for you to
get into the habit of reading, understanding, evaluating and simplifying research publications, a
critical set of skills in highly dynamic industries.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES OF THE CLASS

1. Broad overview of industrial separation processes. Understand their principles and
mechanisms.
2. Know how to use graphical and numerical techniques to analyze separation processes in
terms of the equilibrium stage.
3. Apply the basic thermodynamic laws to develop phase equilibrium data. Use mass transfer
concept for the design of separation units.
4. Acquire basic skills that enable to sizing absorbers, distillation towers, liquid-liquid extraction
units (i.e., determine the number of stages, height of packing, dimensions etc.).
5. Acquire basic knowledge of equipment used in chemical processes.
6. Practice problem solving skills through homework and classroom exercises. Know to how to
use correlations, graphs, vendor information etc to estimate the necessary parameters for
design of separations units.
7. Acquire basic knowledge of commercial computer aided design software (SuperPro
Designer) for design of separation processes
8. Aware the trends of development in separation processes through the invited lecture and
recent research publications.
Class Activities:
Lecture
TR 08:10 a.m. - 09:30 a.m.
SPTH 2200
Discussion F 08:10 a.m. - 09:00 a.m.
INTN 1002
Dont be late!
Both lectures and discussions are mandatory I will lecture during discussions and hold
"discussion" during lectures. The objectives of the discussion sessions are to practice
problem-solving skills.
Classroom exercises - almost every lecture/discussion. Materials will be given in the class
In class quiz twice, cannot tell you the dates in advance
Two discussion sections will hold in Bourns CHE/ENVE computer lab (B250) for studying
how to use SuperPro Designer software (Nov 7 and 14, tentative)
Guest lecture by Dr. Phil Christopher for advanced separation processes
Office hours: with Instructor: Thursdays 11:00-12:00 (B309) or by appointment
with TA: MW 12:00-13:00 (A216)
Guest lecture: Dr. Phil Christopher
Title - Advanced separation and purification processes: Molecular engineering of solid state
materials
Abstract - Growing concern with dwindling fossil fuel resources and increasing atmospheric
pollution has sparked renewed interest in the development of technologies to reduce
pollution from fossil fuel based energy sources and create new classes of energy sources.
In this lecture I will discuss current world-wide research efforts to design solid state materials
that can be used in separation processes to reduce the emission of harmful greenhouse
gases (such as CO2) from fossil fuel based combustion processes. In addition, I will discuss
recent work focused on the development of purification routes for the production of highly
pure hydrogen that can be used to as an input to drive low temperature fuel cells.

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Tentative Course Outline:

Wk
s

Section

Description

Introductio
n

Overview of separation processes; evaluation of competing processes;

special considerations for bioseparations

2.5

Gas
Absorption

Gas-liquid equilibrium; graphic methods; algebraic methods;

equipment selection, design and troubleshooting; packed column
design

2.5

Binary
Distillation

Vapor-liquid eq.; McCabeThiele method; stage efficiency; rate-based

methods; batch distillation; azeotrope

L-L
Extraction

Liquid-liquid ternary diagram; graphic methods; extractor theory and

scale-up; equipment; extraction of bioproducts

Bioseparations

Membrane based Sep.(microfiltation, ultrafiltration; dialysis and reverse

osmosis), chromatography, electrophoresis

Recap all

Driving force vs. resistance; Integration of mass balance, equilibrium,

and transport phenomena for process design.

Important dates (tentative):

Oct 2
Course starts
Nov 4
Mid-term1 (Gas Absorption)
Nov 11
Plant Tour
Nov 14
SuperPro lab 1
Nov 18
Midterm 2 (Distillation)
Nov 20
SuperPro lab 2
Nov 25
Guest lecture by Dr. Christopher
Nov 27, 28 No class Thanksgiving
Dec 11,12
Review
Dec 13
Final exams (11:30 - 14:30; All subjects)
Grading factors:
Homework

28% (4% x 7 HWs)

Late HW policy: 10% off per day
Midterm
20% (10% x 2)
In class quiz
10% (5% x 2)
SuperPro lab report
5%
Final
37%

Miscellaneous:
Use of iLearn: syllabus, reprints of literatures and reading materials, lecture notes,
homework and solutions, announcements, etc.
Errata: there are some printing errors in the textbook. Errata are uploaded to iLearn.
The current version of this syllabus will always be available at iLearn. Latest updated
on October 30, 2014
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