Leader: James

Material Balances -2 Course: ChE 160

Supplemental Instruction Instructor: Heinen/ Stiehl/ Brenza
Iowa State University

Where: The best location is in your Eide textbook. They should have most of what you need.
Otherwise you could look for the ChE 210 book, Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes.
This book is AMAZING.

Discussion
Material balance concepts are THE MOST IMPORTANT concepts to understand in your
engineering life. If you don’t know how to balance a system, you will have trouble in every
subsequent ChE class. Just a fact.

Concept Questions
What is the basic material balance equation?
What is the basic design of a distillation column?
What are the three basic steps in solving a material balance?
What does it mean for a system to be in steady-state?
Review

A stream containing 5.15 wt% chromium is contained in in the wastewater from a metal finishing plant.
The wastewater stream is fed to a treatment unit that removes 95% of the Cr in the feed and recycles it to
the plant. The residual liquid stream leaving the treatment unit is sent to a waste lagoon. The treatment
unit has a capacity of 4500 kg wastewater/hr. If the wastewater leaves the finishing plant at a rate higher
than the capacity of the treatment unit, the excess bypasses the unit and combines with the residual liquid
leaving the unit, and the combined stream goes to the waste lagoon.
If wastewater leaves the plant at 6000 kg/h, calculate the flow rate of liquid to the waste lagoon and the
mass fraction of Cr in this liquid.

An experiment on the growth rate of certain organisms requires an environment of humid air enriched
with oxygen. Three input streams are fed to an evaporation chamber to produce an output stream with the
desired composition:
1. Liquid water, fed at a rate of 20.0 dm3/min
2. Air (21 mole % O2, the rest N2)
3. Pure oxygen, with a flow rate one-fifth of the molar rate of stream 2.
The output gas is analyzed and found to contain 1.5 mole% water. Calculate all unknown stream
variables.

Methanol is produced by reacting carbon monoxide and hydrogen. A fresh feed stream containing CO
and H2 joins a recycle stream and this combined stream is fed to a reactor. The reactor outlet stream
flows at a rate of 350 mol/min and contains 10.6 mol% H2, 64.0 mol% CO, and 25.4 mol% CH3OH.
This stream then enters a cooler in which most of the methanol is condensed. The liquid methanol
condensate is withdrawn as product, and the gas stream leaving the condenser-which contains the CO2
and H2, as well as 0.4 mole % uncondensed CH3OH vapor-is the recycle stream that combines with the
fresh feed. Determine the production rate of liquid methanol.

Exam Prep
REMEMBER the Law of Conservation of Mass. PLEASE. Oh please oh please.

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