ChE 201 Washington State University

Chemical Process Principles and Calculations Voiland School of Chemical Engineering

and Bioengineering
Fall, 2010 Richard L. Zollars

Problem 4.1, Felder and Rousseau

Water enters a 2.00-m
3
tank at a rate of 6.00 kg/s and is withdrawn at a rate of 3.00 kg/s. The
tank is initially half full.
(a) Is this process continuous, batch, or semicontinuous? Is it transient or steady-state?
(b) Write a mass balance for the process (see Example 4.2-1). Identify the terms of the general
balance equation (Equation 4.2-1) present in your equation and state the reason for omitting
any terms.
(c) How long will the tank take to overflow?

SOLUTION

(a) The process is not batch since there are streams entering and leaving the tank. The process
is not continuous since the flow rates into and out of the tank are not equal. Since more
water enters the tank than leaves the tank will eventually fill thus requiring a shutdown in
the process. Since the process is neither batch nor continuous it must be a semi-batch
(semicontinuous) operation. Since the level of water in the tank does not reach a constant
level the process is transient.
(b) First we have to decide on a property to balance. Since mass is conserved do a balance on
the mass of water inside the tank. The balance equation then become

( )
on accumulati n consumptio output generation input
V
dt
d
m m
water k in water out water in water

tan , ,
0 0 = +


The generation and consumption terms have both been set to zero since there are no
reactions occurring within the tank.

(c) We can substitute the known values into the equation above to get

s
m
dt
V d
s
kg
s
kg
s
kg
V
m
kg
dt
d
k in water
k in water
3
tan
tan
3
0030 . 0
0 . 3 0 . 3 0 . 6 1000
=
= =
|
.
|

\
|


The initial volume of water in the tank is 1.00 m
3
. It will overflow when the volume of water
in the tank reaches 2.00 m
3
. Thus the equation above can be integrated to give

| | ( )
min s
s
m
m
t
t
s
m
m m
dt
s
m
V d
t m
m
k in water
56 . 5 333
0030 . 0
00 . 1
0 0030 . 0 00 . 1 00 . 2
0030 . 0
3
3
3
3 3
0
3
00 . 2
00 . 1
tan
3
3
= = =
=
}
=
}