Chemical engineering basic principles

D. M. Himmelblau, Basic Principles and Calculations in Chemical Engineering, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962. 

This section examines and reviews some of the basic principles diat engineers and sciendsts employ in performing design calculations mid predicting die performance of plant equipment. Topics include die tlicrmochemistry, chemical reacdon equilibrimii, chemical kinedcs, die ideal gas law, pardal pressure, pliase equilibrimii, and die Reynolds Number. These basic principles will assist die reader in acquiring a better miderslmidiiig of some of the material diat appears later in die book. 

Several basic principles that engineers and scientists employ in performing design calculations and predicting Uie performance of plant equipment includes Uieniiochemistiy, chemical reaction equilibrimii, chemical kinetics, Uie ideal gas law, partial pressure, pliase equilibrium, and Uie Reynolds Number. 

The new research frontiers in chemical engineering, some of which represent new applications for the discipline, have important implications for education. A continued emphasis is needed on basic principles that cut across many apphcations, but a new way of teaching those principles is also needed. Students must be exposed to both traditional and novel applications of chemical engineering. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has set in motion a project to incorporate into undergraduate chemical engineering courses examples and problems from emerging applications of the discipline. The committee applauds this work, as well as recent AIChE moves to allow more flexibility for students in accredited departments to take science electives. 

Despite all the information that might be obtained using Mossbauer spectroscopy, some of its limitations naturally discouraged many chemists from using this new technique. Unfamiliarity with the basic principles, the fact that most of the early work was done only on iron and tin, and the lack of commercially available research quality equipment until 1965 were other reasons for the lack of interest. This symposium. The Mossbauer Effect and Its Application in Chemistry, was sponsored by Nuclear Science (formerly Nuclear Science Engineering Corp.), a division of International Chemical Nuclear Corp., with the hope that more chemists would learn how Mossbauer spectroscopy has been and can be used. 

A. Reisman, Phase Equilibria, Basic Principles, Applications, and Experimental Techniques, Academic Press, New York, 1970 H. E. Stanley, Introduction to Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena, Oxford University Press, New York, 1971 J. R. Cunningham and D. K. Jones, eds.. Experimental Results for Phase Equilibria and Pure Component Properties, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New York, 1991 S. Malanowski, Modelling Phase Equilibria Thermodynamic Background and Practical Tools, Wiley, New York, 1992 J. M. Prausnitz, R. N. Lichtenthaler, and E. G. de Azevedo, Molecular Thermodynamics of Eluid-Phase Equilibria, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1999. 

Our discussion of these processes will necessarily be qualitative and primarily descriptive. We will describe raw materials, products, process conditions, reactor configurations, catalysts, etc., for what are now the conventional processes for producing these products. We will expect the student to show basic familiarity with these processes by answering simple and qualitative questions about them on exams. This will necessarily require some memorization of facts, but these processes are sufficiently important to all of chemical technology that we believe all chemical engineers should be literate in their principles. 

In addition to the importance of combustion reactors in chemical processes, mcon-troUed combustion reactions create the greatest potential safety hazard in the chemical industry. Therefore, all chemical engineers need to understand the basic principles of combustion reactors to recognize the need for their proper management and to see how improper management of combustion can cause unacceptable disasters. 

Miniaturization—chemistry and biology on a chip—has resulted only because of the confluence of science and engineering. The development of micro-fluidics technology has mainly been driven by the need to miniaturize, integrate, and automate biochemical analysis to increase speed and reduce costs. We are experiencing a revolution in the miniaturization of chemical systems for detection and analysis of hosts of chemical and biological materials and agents. Applications of basic principles of electrokinetics, hydraulics, and surface science have... 

Question (b) is a matter of chemical kinetics and reduces to the need to know the rate equation and the rate constants (customarily designated k) for the various steps involved in the reaction mechanism. Note that the rate equation for a particular reaction is not necessarily obtainable by inspection of the stoichiometry of the reaction, unless the mechanism is a one-step process—and this is something that usually has to be determined by experiment. Chemical reaction time scales range from fractions of a nanosecond to millions of years or more. Thus, even if the answer to question (a) is that the reaction is expected to go to essential completion, the reaction may be so slow as to be totally impractical in engineering terms. A brief review of some basic principles of chemical kinetics is given in Section 2.5. 

In the following pages we shall see that reactor design involves all the basic principles of chemical engineering with the addition of chemical kinetics. Mass transfer, heat transfer and fluid flow are all concerned and complications arise when, as so often is the case, interaction occurs between these transfer processes and the reaction itself. In designing a reactor it is essential to weigh up all the... 

Basic Principles for Modeling Chemical and Biological Engineering Systems... 

---