ABSTRACT
Certainly the most fundamental of laws governing the chemical transformations and separations with which chemical reaction engineering is involved is that of conserva tion of mass. Although this is surely not new to the readers of this text, it is worth the time here to revisit a simple example to make clear what specific functions in a typical mass balance might arise as a result of chemical reaction. The example may seem very elementary, but it is important that we all start at the same point. Consider then the steady-state separation process depicted in Figure 1.1. A stream, L, mass/time, containing two components, A and B, is fed to the process, which divides it into two product streams, V and W, mass/time, also containing compo nents A and B. The mass fractions of components A and B in L, F, and W are given as xA, x B, yA, j/B, and zA, zB, respectively. Mass is conserved in this separation; we may express this mathematically with the following simple relations:
L = V + W
L x A = VyA + WzA
L x B = VyB + WzB
( l-i)
L Separation process
Figure 1.1 Simple separation.
