Exercises 1&2, 3&4 and 5&6 are related.

Start with one of the packages and then

continue to the others. You may select the order based on your interests.

1. a) Derive an equation which describes cooling of an object which is a good thermal conductor. Assume
uniform heat transfer outside the surface of the object.

b) Spherical iron ball with diameter of 1 cm is initially at 100 oC temperature. Air at temperature 20 oC flows
outside it. Calculate temperature of the ball after one minute, when the heat transfer coefficient between
the ball and the flowing air is 50 W/m2K.

c) Calculate the same thing numerically directly from the time dependent energy balance by using ten
second time steps.

2. Stirred tank with 2300 kg of liquid is being heated from initial temperature of 15°C to a final temperature
of 120°C. Saturated steam at 350 kPa(abs) is being fed to the jacket of the tank. Heat capacity of the liquid
is 2.0 kJ/kg K. Heat transfer area is 5m2 and overall heat transfer coefficient 300 W/m2K.

a) How long does the heating take in this batch operation

b) What is steam mass flow in the beginning and in the end?

c) If the vessel would be fully mixed and operated in a continuous mode, how big cold flow could be
heated?

d) How much of the feed could be heated with a countercurrent heat exchanger of similar area?

3. Derive an equation describing concentration changes in a batch reactor with first order irreversible
reaction to the reactant.

4. Derive an equation for concentration changes in a steady state isothermal plug flow reactor, and
compare it to the previous result. Calculate concentration changes with Excel, and study the effect of the
step size and reaction kinetic parameter.

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5. a) Derive compositions at the vapor-liquid interface according to the two film mass transfer theory.
Solve the compositions also numerically from the flux equations using Excel.

b) Derive an equation for the overall mass transfer coefficient in the same situation

6. Calculate instantaneous mass transfer rate (g/s) for a spherical water droplet falling in completely dry
air at atmospheric pressure at terminal velocity of 6 m/s. Temperature of the droplet is 20 oC.

Tips
Always start from the general balance equation ACCUMULATION = IN – OUT + GENERATION

Always write balances for the extensive variables describing the state of the system. Extensive variable is
such that depends on the size of the system (mass, amount of moles, total energy). After this, select proper
physical models to describe the terms in the balances. Also think which of the balance equation term (IN,
OUT or GENERATION) each rate equation describes.

If you wish, you can divide all the balance equation terms with a system size dependent variable (such as
total volume), so that you end up with an intensive variable (temperature, concentration etc.), but do this
only after writing the balance equations.

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Some useful equations for this exercise:
Heat energy (dimension J, no phase changes) E  c p mT  Tref  (1.)

Heat transfer (J/s = W) Q  hA T  Tout  (2.)

Energy for phase change (J), (evaporation or condensation) E  m (3.)

Power for phase change (W), (evaporation or condensation) Qm

 (4.)

Logarithmic mean temperature difference in countercurrent heat exchangers

T1  T2
TLM  (5.)
 T 
ln  1 
 T2 
First order reaction rate (mol/m3s) r  kc (6.)

dc dc
Mass transfer flux (diffusion + convection, mol/m2s) ND  xN tot  D  cv (7.)
dz dz

Mass transfer flux according to the film model (with mass transfer coefficients)

N  k v cV  cIV   k L cIL  cL  (8.)

y p0
Distribution coefficient in ideal vapor-liquid systems at equilibrium K  (9.)
x p
Correlation for mass transfer coefficient outside a spherical object

Sh  2  0,552 Re1 / 2 Sc1 / 3 (10.)

 x1  a 
x1
dx
One perhaps useful integration formula: x x  a   x 0  a 
 ln (11.)
0

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Solutions

Exercise 1

a) Start from the general balance equation ACCUMULATION = IN – OUT + GENERATION

Write the balance for thermal energy. Accumulation term describes the energy content changes as a function
of time (rate of change). IN-OUT describes heat transfer with the surroundings. GEN is here zero, since heat
energy is not generated nor consumed. Balance is written for the whole object thermal energy, which is an
extensive variable.

Balances can formally be written only for extensive variables (here total energy), but based on them
equations describing intensive variables can be derived (e.g. temperature).

The following equations are needed for the balances:

Thermal energy (total enthalpy, dimension J) E  c p mT  Tref  (12.)

where cp is the specific heat capacity per mass, m is the mass of the object and T is temperature. T ref is
arbitrary reference temperature (can be selected freely since enthalpy is a function of state)

Heat transfer (J/s = W) Q  hA T  Tout  (13.)

where h is the heat transfer coefficient, A is the area, and Tout is outside air temperature. Heat transfer is
here defined so, that if the object is hotter than the surroundings, sign of the heat transfer rate is positive.
Therefore it is “OUT” term in the heat balance.

Time dependent energy balance is then

dE dc p mT  Tref 

  hA T  Tout  (14.)
dt dt

Let’s assume density and volume constant, so that we get terms outside the time derivative:

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 dT  Tref 
c p V  hA T  Tout  (15.)
dt

Reference temperature is naturally also a constant, so that we get

 haT  Tout 
dT
cp (16.)
dt

where a is the ratio of surface area and volume. This equation can be separated (move dT and dt to the
different sides of =)

dT ha
 dt (17.)
T  Tout  c p 

Let’s assume the coefficient on the right hand side as constant (heat transfer coefficient and other terms are
here assumed to be time and temperature independent), and we can integrate

T1 t
dT ha 1
T0 T  Tout  c p  0 dt
  (18.)

For which the solution is

 T  Tout   ha
ln  1    t1 (19.)
 T0  Tout   cp

From this, also temperature T1 at any time moment t1 can be solved:

 ha 
T1  Tout  T0  Tout  exp   t  (20.)
 c  1
 p 

This solution is also called as Newton’s law of cooling.

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b) Fill in the known values in the equation. Heat capacity and density was not given, but it was stated that
the material is iron. Search for iron material properties: cp = 450 J/kgK,  = 7874 kg/m3.

Specific area can be calculated from the diameter, a = A/V = 6/d, for spherical objects. Remember to check
that all the variables are in SI units!

The final temperature is obtained T1 = 68.13 oC.

c) Chemical engineering models are often nonlinear, and analytical solutions are not available. This would for
example result from the situation where heat transfer coefficient depends on the temperature difference (as
is the case in natural convection). In the previous example, the rate of change of temperature was

dT

ha
T  Tout  (21.)
dt c p

This can be solved numerically by evaluating the right hand side at t=0 and estimate what would be the
temperature after a short time interval. Here time step was specified to be 10 s. The r.h.s. of the equation is
initially -0.67733 K/s. Assume this as constant during the first time step, so that after 10 s the temperature
would be 100 – 10*0.67733 = 93.2267 oC. Calculate the r.h.s. again with this value and from this, temperature
after 20 s. Continue in a similar way until t=60s. With this numerical result, the final temperature is 67.05 oC,
and the error compared to the analytical result is about 1 oC. This error could be reduced by using shorter
time steps. Another option is to use more advanced time integration methods, where it is not assumed that
the rate of change remains constant during each time step.

In the following table, the calculation process is shown in more details.

time (s) T (C) T-Tout (C) dT/dt (C/s)

0 100 80 -0.677334688

10 93.22665312 73.22665312 -0.619986903

20 87.02678409 67.02678409 -0.567494574

30 81.35183835 61.35183835 -0.519446604

40 76.15737232 56.15737232 -0.475466703

50 71.40270528 51.40270528 -0.435210442

60 67.05060087 47.05060087 -0.398362551

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Exercise 2

a) Use the equation derived earlier (eq. 8), but in such a form where mass and area are shown instead of
specific surface area

 T  Tout   hA
ln  1    t1 (22.)
 T0  Tout   cpm

Outside (tank jacket) temperature is not given, but it is known that it is heated with 350 kPa saturated steam.
Steam temperature can be found from the vapor pressure correlations or from the steam tables. In either
way, Tout = 139 oC. Let’s solve the previous equation for time t1:

 T1  Tout  
ln   ln 
 
 120o C  139o C 

t1    T0  Tout  
   
15o C  139o C 
 5752 s (23.)
hA 300W / m 2 K  5m 2
cpm 2000J / kgK  2300kg

Which is approximately 96 minutes.

b) Calculate first the heating power given by the steam. This can be calculated from the heat transfer equation

Heat transfer (J/s = W) Q  hA T  Tout  (24.)

Insert initial and final temperatures separately, and we get Q(initial) = 186000 W and Q(final) = 28500 W.

Look at the heat of evaporation (latent heat) for water at 350 kPa. This is 2148.5 kJ/kg. Solve steam
consumption at the beginning and at the end. It is assumed here that only latent heat is available from the
steam.

Qm
 (25.)

Instantaneous steam flow in the beginning is about 312 kg/h and in the end 48 kg/h.

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c) In a continuous well mixed vessel temperature is the same as the temperature in the outflow, here 120 oC.
Heat transfer thus corresponds to part b) end value. Although the feed is colder, it is assumed to be mixed
very fast with the content inside the tank.

Mass flow can be calculated from the energy balance

Q  c p m Tout  Tin  (26.)

From here, the mass flow is 0.136 kg/s, or 489 kg/h.

d) In order to calculate countercurrent heat exchanger, logarithmic mean temperature is needed

T1  T2
Q  hA (27.)
 T 
ln  1 
 T2 

Where T1 and T2 are the cold and hot end temperature differences; does not matter which is which (why?).
These are 124 oC and 19 oC. Insert numerical values:

124 o C  19 o C
Q  300W / m K  5m
2 2
 83962W (28.)
 124 o C 
ln  o 
 19 C 

In the same way as in part c), the mass flow is 0.3998 kg/s, or 1440 kg/h. Countercurrent heat exchanger is
considerably more effective than the mixed tank since the driving force (temperature difference) stays higher
over the whole heat transfer area.