1985

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

College of Engineering and Agro-Industrial Technology
University of the Philippines Los Baos
College, Laguna 4031 Philippines Tel. No. (049) 536-2315 Fax 536-2315

ChE 31 Introduction to Chemical Engineering

2nd sem. A.Y. 2013-2014
PROBLEM SET NO. 2
MATERIAL BALANCES NONREACTIVE SYSTEMS

the degree-of-freedom analysis for the overall system, the evaporator, and the bypassevaporator product mixing point, and write in order the equations you would solve to
determine all unknown stream varaibles. In each equation, circle the variable for which you
would solve, but dont do any calculations.
(b) Calculate the amount of product (42% concentrate) produced per 100 kg fresh juice fed to
the process and the fraction of the feed that bypasses the evaporator.
4. In the production of a bean oil, beans containing 13.0 wt% oil and 87.0 wt% solids are
ground and fed to a stirred tank (the extractor) along with a recycled stream of liquid nhexane. The feed ratio is 3 kg hexane/kg beans. The ground beans are suspended in the liquid,
and essentially all of the oil in the beans is extracted into the hexane. The extractor effluent
passes to a filter. The filter cake contains 75.0 wt% bean solids and the balance bean oil and
hexane, the latter two in the same ratio in which they emerge from the extractor. The filter
cake is discarded and the liquid filtrate is fed to a heated evaporator in which the hexane is
vaporized and the oil remains as a liquid. The oil is stored in drums and shipped. The hexane
vapor is subsequently cooled and condensed, and the liquid hexane condensate is recycled to
the extractor.

1. Wet air containing 4.0 mole % water vapor is passed through a column of calcium chloride
pellets. The pellets adsorb 97.0% of the water and none of the other constituents of the air.
The column packing was initially dry and had a mass of 3.40 kg. Following 5.0 hours of
operation, the pellets are reweighed and found to have a mass of 3.54 kg.
(a) Calculate the molar flow rate (mol/h) of the feed gas and the mole fraction of water vapor in
the product gas.
(b) The mole fraction of water in the product gas is monitored and found to have the value
calculated in part (a) for the first 10 hours of operation, but then it begins to increase. What
is the most likely cause of the increase? If the process continues to run, what will the mole
fraction of water in the product gas eventually be?
2. Seawater containing 3.50 wt% salt passes through a series of 10 evaporators. Roughly equal
quantities of water are vaporized in each of the 10 units and then condensed and combined to
obtain a product stream of fresh water. The brine leaving each evaporator except the tenth is
fed to the next evaporator. The brine leaving the tenth evaporator contains 5.0 wt% salt.
(a) Draw a flowchart of the process showing the first, fourth and tenth evaporators. Label all the
streams leaving and entering these evaporators.
(b) Determine the fractional yield of fresh water from the process (kg H 2O recovered/kg H2O in
process feed) and the weight percent of salt in the solution leaving the fourth evaporator.
3. Fresh orange juice contains 12.0 wt% solids and the balance water, and concentrated orange
juice contains 42.0 wt% solids. Initially a single evaporation process was used for the
concentration, but volatile constituents of the juice escaped with the water, leaving the
concentrate with a flat taste. The current process overcomes this problem by passing the
evaporator with a fraction of the fresh juice. The juice that enters the evaporator is
concentrated to 58 wt% solids, and the evaporator product stream is mixed with the bypassed
fresh juice to achieve the desired final concentration.
(a) Draw and label a fliwcahrt of this process, neglecting the vaporization of everything in the
juice but water. First prove that the subsystem containing the point where the bypass stream
splits off from the evaporator feed has one degree of freedom. (If you think it has zero
degrees, try determining the unknown variables associated with this system.) Then perform

(a) Draw and label a flowchart of the process, do the degree-of-freesom analysis, and write in an
efficient order the equations you would solve to determine all unknown stream variables,
circling the variables for which you would solve.
(b) Calculate the yield of bean oil product (kg oil/kg beans fed), the required fresh hexane feed
(kg C6H16/kg beans fed), and the recycle to fresh feed ratio (kg hexane recycled/kg fresh
feed).

REMINDER! 2nd LONG EXAM SCHEDULE: FEBRUARY 10, 2014 (MONDAY), 4-6
PM. PLEASE SUBMIT ONE BLUE BOOK (WITH NAME & SECTION) UNTIL FEB. 9,
2014.