ChE 304: Transport Phenomena III

(Mass Transfer)

Dr. Oki Muraza

Department of Chemical Engineering (CHE)

King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM)

Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
 Introduction

Mass transfer is important in many areas of science and engineering

Mass transfer occurs when a component in a mixture migrates in the

same phase or from phase to phase because of a difference in
concentration between two points

Many familiar phenomena involves mass transfer:

• Liquid in an open pail of water evaporates into still air because of the
difference in concentration of water vapor at the water surface and the
surrounding air

• A piece of sugar added to a cup of coffee eventually dissolves by itself and

diffuses to the surrounding solution

• When vegetables, fruits etc exposed to the atmosphere, they will dry
partially when water in the vegetables/fruits diffuses through the inside
mass, to the surface, and then to the atmosphere
 Introduction

Industrial applications
Humidification/dehumidification of air (air conditioning)

Drying of fruits, vegetable, industrial products etc

Distillation to separate diffraction fractions (gasoline, kerosene, diesel

etc) from petroleum feeds

Reaction Engineering, especially in catalytic processes

Purification process, such as SO2 and CO2 from flue gas streams
 Fundamentals of Mass Transfer

If we consider the lump sugar added to the cup of coffee, experience

shows that the length of time required to distribute the sugar will
depend upon whether the liquid is quiescent or whether it is
mechanically agitated by a spoon.

The mechanism of mass transfer, as we also observed in heat transfer,

depends upon the dynamics of the system in which it occurs

Mass can be transferred by random molecular motion in the

quiescent fluid, or it can be transferred from a surface into a moving
fluid, aided by the dynamic characteristics of the flow
 Fundamentals of Mass Transfer
These two distinct modes of transport: (i) Molecular mass transfer and
(ii) convective mass transfer, are analogous to conduction heat transfer
and convective heat transfer

However, an important difference is that in molecular mass transfer, one

or more of the components of the medium is moving. In heat transfer by
conduction the medium is usually stationary and only energy in the form
of heat is being transported

Also, in the case of heat transfer the two mechanisms often act
simultaneously.

However, in the co-influence of the two modes of mass transfer,

one mechanism can dominate quantitatively so that approximate

solutions involving only the dominant model need be used
 Molecular Mass Transfer
or Molecular Diffusion/Diffusion

Molecular diffusion can be defined as the transfer or movement of

individual molecules through a fluid by means of the random, individual
movements of the molecules

We can imagine the molecules travelling only in straight lines and

changing direction by bouncing off other molecules after collisions

Since the molecules travel in a random path, molecular diffusion is often

called a random-walk process
 Molecular Mass Transfer
or Molecular Diffusion/Diffusion

The figure below shows the molecular diffusion process schematically.

A random path that the blue molecule might take in diffusing through white
molecules
from right hand side to the left hand side.

Since there are greater number of blue molecules in the right hand side, then
more blue molecules will diffuse from right to left hand side. The net diffusion
of blue molecules from high to low concentration region
Lec 1
 Elemental volume containing a binary, multicomponent, and pseudo-binary mixture.

Fig_24 2
 Mass Concentration

Mass Concentration for component A, A

Total Mass Concentration for component, 

n = number of species(component) in the mixture.

Eq_22-1a
 Mass Fraction

Mass Fraction, wA

Total density
The sum of mass fractions:

Eq_22-2
 Molar Concentration of species A

density

Molecular weight

For gas phase,

concentration is expressed with partial pressure of species A

Eq_22-4
 Total Molar Concentration, c

For gas mixture that obey ‘ideal gas law’

Eq_22-6
 Mole Fraction for Liquid mixtures, xA

Eq_22-8a
Eq_22-9
Eq_22-10a
Eq_22-11
Table_22-1