Lecture 2

Simple Applications of Material Balances

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Fundamentals of Material Balances

Two types of balances can be written:
1. Differential balances, or balances that indicate what is
happening in a system at an instant in time. Each term of the
balance equation is a rate (rate of input, rate of generation,
etc.) and has units of the balanced quantity unit divided by a
time unit (people/yr), g SO2/s, barrels/day). This is the type of
balance usually applied to a continuous process.
2. Integral balances, or balances that describe what happens
between two instants of time. Each term of the equation is an
amount of the balanced quantity and has the corresponding
unit (people, g SO2, barrels). This type of balance is usually
applied to a batch process with the two instants of time being
the moment after the input takes place and the moment
before the product is withdrawn.
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 Fundamentals of Material Balances
The following rules may be used to simplify the material
balance equation:
• If the balanced quantity is total mass, set generation = 0,
and consumption = 0. except in nuclear reaction, mass can
neither be created nor destroyed.
• If the balanced substance is a nonreactive species (neither a
reactant nor a product), set generation = 0 and consumption =
0.
• If a system is at steady state, set accumulation = 0, at any
case of what is being balanced. By definition, in a steady-state
system nothing can change with time, including the amount of
the balanced quantity.
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 Fundamentals of Material Balances
Balances on Continuous Steady-State Processes :
For continuous processes at steady-state, the accumulation
term in the general balance equation, equation 1 equals Zero
and the equation simplifies to :
Input + generation = output + consumption Eq. 2

If the balance is on a nonreactive species or on total mass, the

generation and consumption terms equal zero and the
equation reduces to :
Input = output

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 Fundamentals of Material Balances
Types of material balance :
1- Overall material balance;
2- Individual material balance or component balance.
Balances:
xDA , D
F=D+w
D = DA+DB
XFA , F
F xFA = D xDA + W xWA
F = FA+FB xWA , W

F = W A+WB

F xFB = D xDB + W xWB

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 Fundamentals of Material Balances
Integral Balances on Batch Processes

Ammonia is produced from nitrogen and hydrogen in a

batch reactor. At time t = 0 there are n0 mol of NH3 in the
reactor, and at a later time tf the reactor terminates and
the contents of the reactor, which include nf mol of
ammonia, are withdrawn. Between t0 and tf no ammonia
enters or leaves through the reactor boundaries, so the
general balance equation (eq. 1) is simply generation =
accumulation. Moreover, the quantity of ammonia that
builds up (accumulates) in the reactor between t0 and tf is
nf – n0, the final amount minus (-) the initial amount.

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 The same reasoning may be applied to any substance
participating in a batch process to obtain :
Accumulation = final output – initial input
= generation – consumption
Equating these two expressions for the accumulation yields:
Initial input + generation = final output + consumption
Eq. 3

This equation is identical to eq. 2 for continuous steady-state

processes, except that in this case the input and output terms
denote the initial and final amounts of the balanced substance
rather than flow rates of the balanced substance in
continuous feed and product streams. The words “initial” and
“final” may be left out for brevity, as long as you don’t lose
sight of what “input” and “output” mean in the context of
batch processes.
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