Chapter 14

MASS TRANSFER
INTRODUCTION
Whenever there is an imbalance of a commodity in a medium, nature tends to
redistribute it until a “balance” or “equality” is established. This tendency is often referred
to as the driving force, which is the mechanism behind many naturally occurring
transport phenomena.
The commodity simply creeps away during
redistribution, and thus the flow is a diffusion
process. The rate of flow of the commodity is
proportional to the concentration gradient
dC/dx, which is the change in the concentration
C per unit length in the flow direction x, and the
area A normal to flow direction.

kdiff is the diffusion coefficient of the medium, which is a measure of how fast a
commodity diffuses in the medium, and the negative sign is to make the flow in the
positive direction a positive quantity (note that dC/dx is a negative quantity since
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concentration decreases in the flow direction).
The diffusion coefficients and thus diffusion rates of gases
depend strongly on temperature.
The diffusion rates are higher at higher temperatures.
The larger the molecular spacing, the higher the diffusion rate.
Diffusion rate: gases > liquids > solids

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ANALOGY BETWEEN HEAT AND MASS
TRANSFER
We can develop an understanding of mass transfer in a short time with
little effort by simply drawing parallels between heat and mass transfer.

Temperature
The driving force for mass transfer is
the concentration difference.
Both heat and mass are transferred
from the more concentrated regions
to the less concentrated ones.
If there is no difference between the
concentrations of a species at
different parts of a medium, there will
be no mass transfer.

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Conduction
Mass is transferred by conduction (called diffusion) and convection only.
Rate of mass Fick’s law
diffusion of diffusion

DAB is the diffusion coefficient (or mass

diffusivity) of the species in the mixture
CA is the concentration of the species in the
mixture

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Convection
Mass convection (or convective mass transfer) is the mass transfer mechanism
between a surface and a moving fluid that involves both mass diffusion and bulk
fluid motion.
Fluid motion also enhances mass transfer considerably.
In mass convection, we define a
concentration boundary layer in an
analogous manner to the thermal boundary
layer and define new dimensionless
numbers that are counterparts of the
Nusselt and Prandtl numbers.
Newton’s law
of cooling

Rate of mass
convection

hmass the mass transfer coefficient

As the surface area
Cs − C a suitable concentration difference
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across the concentration boundary layer.
MASS DIFFUSION
Fick’s law of diffusion states that the rate of diffusion of
a chemical species at a location in a gas mixture (or
liquid or solid solution) is proportional to the
concentration gradient of that species at that location.

1 Mass Basis
On a mass basis, concentration is expressed in
terms of density (or mass concentration).

The density of a mixture at a location is equal to the

sum of the densities of its constituents at that location.

The mass fraction of a species ranges between

0 and 1, and the sum of the mass fractions of
the constituents of a mixture be equal to 1. 7
2 Mole Basis
On a mole basis, concentration is expressed in terms of molar concentration
(or molar density), which is the amount of matter in kmol per unit volume.

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Fick’s Law of Diffusion:
Stationary Medium Consisting of Two Species
Fick’s law of diffusion

Here jdiff, A is the (diffusive)

mass flux of species A (mass
transfer by diffusion per unit
time and per unit area normal
to the direction of mass
transfer, in kg/s·m2) and
is the (diffusive) molar flux
(in kmol/s·m2). 9
Binary diffusion coefficient or
mass diffusivity, DAB: The constant
of proportionality in Fick’s law. 10
1. The diffusion coefficients, in general, are highest in gases and lowest in
solids. The diffusion coefficients of gases are several orders of magnitude
greater than those of liquids.
2. Diffusion coefficients increase with temperature. The diffusion coefficient
(and thus the mass diffusion rate) of carbon through iron during a hardening
process, for example, increases by 6000 times as the temperature is raised
from 500°C to 1000°C. 11
STEADY MASS DIFFUSION THROUGH A WALL
Many practical mass transfer problems involve the diffusion of a species through a
plane-parallel medium that does not involve any homogeneous chemical reactions under
one-dimensional steady conditions.

diffusion resistance
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of the wall
The rate of mass diffusion through a plane wall is
proportional to the average density, the wall area,
and the concentration difference across the wall, but
is inversely proportional to the wall thickness.

molar diffusion resistance

of the wall in s/kmol

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Steady one-dimensional mass transfer
through nonreacting cylindrical and
spherical layers

On a molar basis

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