KAMARAJ COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF POLYMER TECHNOLOGY

THIRD INTERNAL TEST – 2010

SUB CODE: PT 44 SUB NAME: PRINCIPLES OF CHEMICAL ENGINERING

SUB INCHARGE: K.AGATHIAN

TOTAL MARKS: 50 MARKS TIME: 1 ½ HOURS

PART A 5 X 2 = 10 Marks
1. Define relative humidity?
2. Name various packing materials used for absorption?
3. What are the general requirements of adsorbents?
4. Define humid heat & humid volume?
5. Define mass transfer coefficient and & Relative volatility?
PART B 4X 10 = 40 Marks
6. Explain the working of Rotary drier and Tunnel drier?
7. Discuss in detail the principle and equipment used for absorption?
8. Explain the working of cooling towers?
9. Discuss in detail about distillation process?

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 KEY TO FIRST INTERNAL QUESTION

PART A
1. Relative volatility:
It is expressed in percentage of 100 pA / PA
Where pA and PA are the partial and vapor pressure at the dry bulb temperature of the mixture.

2. Packing Materials Used For Absorption:

• Ceramic Intaloks Saddle Ring,
• Ceramic Super Intaloks Saddle Ring,
• Super Cascade Ring,
• Ceramic Cascade Ring,
• Ceramic Pall Ring,
• Ceramic Cross-partition Ring,
• Ceramic Y Form Ring,
• Ceramic Conjugate Ring,
• Ceramic Raschig Ring
3. General Requirements Of Adsorbents:
• Activated carbon is used as an adsorbent
• Adsorbents are used usually in the form of spherical pellets, rods, moldings, or
monoliths with hydrodynamic diameters between 0.5 and 10 mm.
• They must have high abrasion resistance, high thermal stability and small pore
diameters, which results in higher exposed surface area and hence high surface
capacity for adsorption.
• The adsorbents must also have a distinct pore structure which enables fast
transport of the gaseous vapors.
Most industrial adsorbents fall into one of three classes:
• Oxygen-containing compounds – Are typically hydrophilic and polar,
including materials such as silica gel and zeolites.
• Carbon-based compounds – Are typically hydrophobic and non-polar,
including materials such as activated carbon and graphite.
• Polymer-based compounds - Are polar or non-polar functional groups in a
porous polymer matrix.

4. Humid Heat & Humid Volume:

Humid heat:
It is defined as the heat capacity of 1 kg dry air and the moisture contained in it.
CH = 1.006=1.84 H kJ / kg dry air. K

Humid volume:
It is defined as the volume of mixture and accompanying water vapor per kg of dry air. This
is also known as psychrometric volume.
VH = RT / pw.Mw

5. Mass Transfer Coefficient And & Relative Volatility:

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In engineering, the mass transfer coefficient is a diffusion rate constant that relates the mass
transfer rate, mass transfer area, and concentration gradient as driving force:

Where:

• kc is the mass transfer coefficient [mol/(s·m2)/(mol/m3), or m/s]

• is the mass transfer rate [mol/s]
• A is the effective mass transfer area [m2]
• ΔCA is the driving force concentration difference [mol/m3].

PART B

6. Rotary drier & tunnel drier: 10 Marks

Rotary drier 5 Marks
• In direct heat Rotary Dryers a continuous feed of wet paniculate material is dried by
contact with heated air, while being transported along the interior of a rotating cylinder,
with the rotating shell acting as the conveying device and stirrer.
• SSP offers Rotary Dryers in co-current and counter current operation. In the former the
wet material is exposed to the hottest air which enables heat sensitive or sticky materials
to be dried successfully.
• In counter current operation dried material is exposed to the hotest air helping to achieve
very low moisture content.
• The hot gases may enter at the temperature of 16500 C.
• APPLICATIONS Ammonium Sulphate China clay Sodium sulphate Citric acid Mineral
sand Effluents etc
Tunnel drier: 5 Marks
• Versatile Drying method (Batch or continuous type) used for drying of various types of
solids efficiently.
• It can also reduce the energy requirement of a spray drying plant when used as a second
stage dryer for production of instant quality powders.
• Fluid Bed Dryer comprises of a top fluidising chamber & a bottom air distribution
chamber separated by a specially designed perforated plate.
• The feed of wet materials is dried by intimate contact with hot air when the material is in
a fluidised state.
• A vibrating mechanism can be attached to give a forward motion cum agitation to the
product at a controlled rate.
• APPLICATIONS Mile Powder Detergents Lactose Cheese Powder Fruit Pellets Salt
Agglomerated Powders

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 7. Absorption: 10 Marks
• The separation of solute gases from gaseous mixtures of noncondensables by transfer into a
liquid solvent.
• This recovery is achieved by contacting the gas stream with a liquid that offers specific or
selective solubility for the solute gas or gases to be recovered.
• The operation of absorption is applied in industry to purify process streams or recover
valuable components of the stream.
• It is used extensively to remove toxic or noxious components (pollutants) from effluent gas
streams

The absorption process requires the following steps:

• Diffusion of the solute gas molecules through the host gas to the liquid boundary layer based
on a concentration gradient
• Salvation of the solute gas in the host liquid based on gas-liquid solubility
• Diffusion of the solute gas based on concentration gradient, thus depleting the liquid
boundary layer and permitting further salvation.
• The removal of the solute gas from the boundary layer is often accomplished by adding
neutralizing agents to the host liquid to change the molecular form of the solute gas.
• This process is called absorption.

8. PACKED BED 10 Marks

• A packed bed is a hollow tube, pipe, or other vessel that is filled with a packing material.
• The packing can be randomly filled with small objects like Raschig rings or else it can be a
specifically designed structured packing.
• The purpose of a packed bed is typically to improve contact between two phases in a
chemical or similar process. Packed beds can be used in a chemical reactor,
a distillation process, or a scrubber, but packed beds have also been used to store heat in
chemical plants.
• In this case, hot gases are allowed to escape through a vessel that is packed with a refractory
material until the packing is hot.
• Air or other cool gas is then fed back to the plant through the hot bed, thereby pre-heating the
air or gas feed.

9. Cooling towers: 10 Marks

• The most obvious form of humidification equipment is the spray chamber.
• Here, the contacting liquid is sprayed as a mist into the gas stream.
• Gas velocity is kept low so that the contact time is high so that there will be only small
amount of liquid physically entrained in the gas stream.
• These units are usually restricted to the small-scale operations and are frequently used in
humidity control of a room or plant where either humidification or dehumidification of the
inlet air is required.

TYPES OF COOLING TOWERS

• Cooling towers are generally used for humidification operations.

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 • Cooling towers fall into two main sub-divisions: natural draft and mechanical draft.
• Natural draft designs use very large concrete chimneys to introduce air through the media.
• Due to the tremendous size of these towers (500 ft high and 400 ft in diameter at the base)
they are generally used for water flow rates above 200,000 gal/min.
• Usually these types of towers are only used by utility power stations.

• Mechanical draft cooling towers are much more widely used. These towers utilize large fans
to force air through circulated water.

The water falls downward over fill surfaces that help increase the contact time between the water and
the air. This helps maximize heat transfer between the two

10. Distillation: 10 Marks

• The boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid
equals the pressure in the liquid, enabling bubbles to form without being crushed.
• A special case is the normal boiling point, where the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the
ambient atmospheric pressure.
• It is a common misconception that in a liquid mixture at a given pressure, each component
boils at the boiling point corresponding to the given pressure and the vapors of each
component will collect separately and purely.
• This, however, does not occur even in an idealized system. Idealized models of distillation are
essentially governed by Raoult's law and Dalton's law, and assume that vapor-liquid
equilibria are attained.
• Raoult's law assumes that a component contributes to the total vapor pressure of the mixture
in proportion to its percentage of the mixture and its vapor pressure when pure, or succinctly:
partial pressure equals mole fraction multiplied by vapor pressure when pure. If one
component changes another component's vapor pressure, or if the volatility of a component is
dependent on its percentage in the mixture, the law will fail.
• Dalton's law states that the total vapor pressure is the sum of the vapor pressures of each
individual component in the mixture.
• When a multi-component liquid is heated, the vapor pressure of each component will rise,
thus causing the total vapor pressure to rise.
• When the total vapor pressure reaches the pressure surrounding the liquid, boiling occurs and
liquid turns to gas throughout the bulk of the liquid. Note that a mixture with a given
composition has one boiling point at a given pressure, when the components are mutually
soluble.

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BATCH DISTILLATION

• Heating an ideal mixture of two volatile substances A and B (with A having the higher
volatility, or lower boiling point) in a batch distillation setup (such as in an apparatus depicted
in the opening figure) until the mixture is boiling results in a vapor above the liquid which
contains a mixture of A and B.
• The ratio between A and B in the vapor will be different from the ratio in the liquid: the ratio
in the liquid will be determined by how the original mixture was prepared, while the ratio in
the vapor will be enriched in the more volatile compound, A (due to Raoult's Law,).
• The vapor goes through the condenser and is removed from the system.
• This in turn means that the ratio of compounds in the remaining liquid is now different from
the initial ratio (i.e. more enriched in B than the starting liquid).
• The result is that the ratio in the liquid mixture is changing, becoming richer in component B.
This causes the boiling point of the mixture to rise, which in turn results in a rise in the
temperature in the vapor, which results in a changing ratio of A : B in the gas phase (as
distillation continues, there is an increasing proportion of B in the gas phase). This results in a
slowly changing ratio A : B in the distillate.
• If the difference in vapor pressure between the two components A and B is large (generally
expressed as the difference in boiling points), the mixture in the beginning of the distillation
is highly enriched in component A, and when component A has distilled off, the boiling
liquid is enriched in component B.