ChE 211

Basic Principles in Chemical

Engineering
Introduction
 Syllabus
• Lecturer : Asst.Prof.Dr. Ceren Haktanır ( Room 543)
• Office hour : Wednesday 14:30 – 18:20
• e-mail : ceren.oktar@gazi.edu.tr
 Catalog Description
Basic concepts, dimensions and unit systems. Material and energy balances, applications to physical and chemical
systems.
Course Objectives
1. Use the proper units and make the conversion of units when it is necessary.
2. Describe the processes and define the process variables (Flow rate, chemical composition, temperature,
pressure).
3. Apply the material balance on single units.
4. Apply the material balance on multiple units with or without a recycle and/or bypass.
5. Be able to solve the material balance problems for reactive processes.
6. Have an understanding of energy concept and the first law of thermodynamics.
7. Make the energy balance on closed and open systems.
8. Be able to get and use the physical and thermodynamic data.
9. Practice teamwork by forming and working in study groups.
10. Improve communication skills by listening, thinking and talking during the classroom discussion of the course
material and in active section.
11. Improve communication skills by submitting concisely and effectively written homework solutions individually
or in teams.
Textbook
R.M. FELDER, R.W. Rousseau “ Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes,” Third Edition John
Wiley & Sons (2000).
Supplementary Reference
D.M. Himmelblau, “ Basic Principles and Calculations in Chemical Engineering,”6 th Ed., Prentice Hall
(1996).
Course Contents and Tentative Time Table
INTRODUCTION 6 hours
∙ Units and dimensions
∙ Conversion of units
∙ Numerical Calculation and estimation
∙ Dimensional homogeneity
∙ Process data representation and analysis

PROCESSES and PROCESS VARIABLES 2 hours

FUNDAMENTALS OF MATERIAL BALANCES

∙ Process classification 2 hour
∙ Material balance calculations (single unit systems) 10 hours
✔ Draw a flowchart
✔ Choose a basis
✔ Perform the degree of freedom analysis
✔ Write the equations
✔ Perform the calculations

∙ Balances on multiple unit systems 8 hours

∙ Balances on reactive processes 8 hours

ENERGY BALANCES
∙ Energy and energy balances 2 hours
∙ Balances on nonreactive processe 10 hours
∙ Balances on reactive processes 4 hours
Homework

• You must work in groups of three or four on the required homework and submit
one solution set per group.
• One group member will be designated the leader for each assignment. The leader
will be responsible for coordinating the work.
• After being a group leader, an individual may not be the leader again until
everyone else in the group has held the position.
•
• Your signature on the solution set certifies that you have participated in solving
most of the problems and you understand all the solutions. Late homework will be
accepted up to one week after the due date, but with a reduction in grade.
Examinations

There will be two midterm exams and a final exam. All exams will be open
textbook. It is your responsibility to understand the exam questions. If you have
difficulty with English, you may use a dictionary with you.
Grading

At the end of the semester your weighted average will be calculated as follows:

Midterm % 20
Quiz % 20
Homework % 20
Final Exam % 40

Total % 100
INTRODUCTION
Processes involved in ChE
❑ mixing
❑ separation
- distillation absorption freezing extraction
(heat mass and momentum transfer)
❑ chemical reactions
♦What is the difference between a chemical engineer
and a chemist?
Chemist:
- works in test tubes
-small quantities
-batch constant-T experiments
-small containers
-a catalyst is added and reactions
proceed with time
CHEMICAL Engineer:
• scaling up
• works closely with mechanical, electrical, civil, and
metallurgical engineers in order to design and
operate the physical equipment in a plant (such as: ?)
A CHEMICAL Engineer:
- works with large quantities
- large equipment
- generally in continuous mode
- feed streams and product streams are continuously
fed and withdrawn from the process
-steady state operations (all parameters such as T, P,
liquid livel, flow rates, compositions, etc. are all
constant with time
• What are the typical activities a chemical engineer
works with?

1. DEVELOPMENT : to commercialize (scale up) a

chemical process

Lab size process → pilot plant → plant

 2.DESIGN : A team of engineers design the commercial plant,
based on experience and data obtained from the Lab size
process and the pilot plant.
The Chem. Eng. specifies:
❑Process flow rates and conditions
❑Equipment types and sizes
❑Materials of constructions
❑Process configuration
❑Control systems
❑Safety systems
❑Other
 3.CONSTRUCTION : Assembling of all components into a
complete plant

4.MANUFACTURING : running the plant or operations and

production. Things that are important and relevant:
❑efficiency
❑safety
❑design modifications
❑reduce costs
❑improve product quality
❑reduce pollution
5. TECHNICAL SALES

6. RESEARCH
 Dimensions, Units and Their Conversion

• Dimensions: basic concepts ofmeasurement

e.g. mass, length, time, temperature etc.
• Dimensions that can be measured independently are sufficient to describe physical quantities.
Length, time, mass, temperature, molar amount.
• Dimensions that can be developed in terms of fundamental dimensions are called “Derived Dimensions”.
e.g. velocity, acceleration, force, pressure, density, heat capacity, density etc.
 Units

• Units: Means of expressing dimensions.

Length: meters
Time: seconds
• System of Units
- SI: Le Systeme Internationale d’unites (International System)
- Metric System: CGS (centimeters grams seconds)
- American Engineering System: fps (feet pound second)
SI and Metric Unit Systems
SI and Metric Unit Systems
SI Prefixes

Ex:
1 Gm= 109 m
1 cm= 10-2 m
American Engineering System
 Temperature Conversions
• There are three most frequently used scales of temperature: Celcius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin
• We will use the following equations to convert a temperature reported in one of these systems to the equivalent
temperature in another.
When we are dealing with fps unit system, we have to change the natural force unit
to derived force unit !!!
Temperature Conversions
Numerical Calculation and Estimation
Scientific Notation, Significant Figures and Precision
For example
• When two or more quantities are combined by multiplication and/or division

The number of significant figures in the result should equal to the lowest number of significant
figures of any multiplicands or divisors !

• The rule for addition and subtraction

!! When two or more numbers are added or subtracted, the position of the last significant figures of
each number relative to the decimal point should be compared.
!! Of these positions, the one farthest to the left is the position of the last significant figure of the
sum or difference.
 Validating Results
Every problem you will ever have to solve will involve two critical questions:
1) How do I get the solution?
2) When I get one, how do I know it is right?

Among approaches you can use to validate a quantitative solution are:

• Back substitution: a straightforward method in which you simply subsitude your solution back into the
equation and make sure it works.
• Order of magnitude estimation: means coming up with a crude and easy to obtain approximation of
the answer to a problem and making sure that more exact solution comes reasonably close to it.
• Applying the test of reasonableness: Verifying that the solution makes sense. If, for example, a
calculated velocity of water flowing in a pipe is faster than the speed of light you should suspect that a
mistake has been made.
Order of Magnitude Analysis
Example
Estimation of Measured Value
In theory X should have a unique value; however, in a real reactor X is a random variable, changing in an
unpredictable manner from one run to another at the same experimental conditions. The values of X
obtained after 10 successive runs might be as follows:
 How can we estimate the true value of X?
The most common estimate is the sample mean ( or arithmetic mean). We collect N measures of X
(X1, X2, X3,…,XN ) and then calculate
 Sample Variance of Scattered Data

Three quantities are used to express the extent to which values of a random variable scattered about their mean:

• The Range
• The Sample Variance
• The Sample Standard Deviation
Example