High mass transfer processes

The term mass transfer is used to denote the transference of a component in a mixture from a region where its concentration is high to a region where the concentration is lower. Mass transfer process can take place in a gas or vapour or in a liquid, and it can result from the random velocities of the molecules (molecular diffusion) or from the circulating or eddy currents present in a turbulent fluid (eddy diffusion). 

In these experiments, it might be anticipated that, with high concentrations of vapour in the air, the rate of evaporation would no longer be linearly related to the partial pressure difference because of the contribution of bulk flow to the mass transfer process (Section 10.2.3), although there is no evidence of this even at mole fractions of vapour at the surface as high as 0.5. Possibly the experimental measurements were nol sufficiently sensitive to detect this effect. 

Column reactors can contain a draft tube - possibly filled with a packing characterized by low pressure drop - or be coupled with a loop tube, to make the gas recirculating within the reaction zone (see Fig. 5.4-9). In recent years, the Buss loop reactor has found many applications in two- and three-phase processes About 200 Buss loop systems are now in operation worldwide, also in fine chemicals plants. This is due to the high mass-transfer rate between the gas and the liquid phase. The Buss loop reactor can be operated semibatch-wise or continuously. As a semibach reactor it is mostly used for catalytic hydrogenations. 

Cmcial factors in designing membrane reactors are (1) high area for high mass transfer, (2) membranes that have a high permeabihty to only one species, (3) membranes that are catalytic, and (4) membranes that have no holes that leak reactants from one compartment to the other. With any process the reactor wiU not function properly if aU these criteria are not met, and for oxidation reactions ary leaks between compartments can be disastrous. 

Dekker et al. [170] studied the extraction process of a-amylase in a TOMAC/isooctane reverse micellar system in terms of the distribution coefficients, mass transfer coefficient, inactivation rate constants, phase ratio, and residence time during the forward and backward extractions. They derived different equations for the concentration of active enzyme in all phases as a function of time. It was also shown that the inactivation took place predominantly in the first aqueous phase due to complex formation between enzyme and surfactant. In order to minimize the extent of enzyme inactivation, the steady state enzyme concentration should be kept as low as possible in the first aqueous phase. This can be achieved by a high mass transfer rate and a high distribution coefficient of the enzyme between reverse micellar and aqueous phases. The effect of mass transfer coefficient during forward extraction on the recovery of a-amylase was simulated for two values of the distribution coefficient. These model predictions were verified experimentally by changing the distribution coefficient (by adding... 

Results of these calculations for H mordenite are presented in Table IV. The macropore diffusion plays a role far from negligible even at high temperature and in some instances (e.g., low temperature and large particles) is the major contribution to the total mass-transfer resistance. No single step controls the overall mass-transfer process as no resistance has a relatively large enough contribution to dominate the process. In every... 

Many fluid systems perform differently at higher pressures than at lower ones (Figure 6.1-1). This make some high-pressure mass-transfer processes different, also. 

Equipment Considerations When the solute has a large heat of solution and the feed gas contains a high concentration of solute, as in absorption of HCl in water, the effects of heat release during absorption may be so pronounced that the installation of heat-transfer surface to remove the heat of absorption may be as important as providing sufficient interfacial area for the mass-transfer process itself. The added heat-transfer area may consist of internal cooling coils on the trays, or the liquid may be withdrawn from the tower, cooled in an external heat exchanger, and then returned to the tower. 

These two conditions (Eqs. (4.97) and (4.98)) are usually sufficient for assuming the medium as quiescent in dilute systems in which both cua.s and cda,oo are small. However, in nondilute or concentrated systems the mass transfer process can give rise to a convection normal to the surface, which is known as the Stefan flow [Taylor and Krishna, 1993]. Consider a chemical species A which is transferred from the solid surface to the bulk with a mass concentration cua.oo- When the surface concentration coa,s is high, and the carrier gas B does not penetrate the surface, then there must be a diffusion-induced Stefan convective outflux, which counterbalances the Fickian influx of species B. In such situations the additional condition for neglecting convection in mass transport systems is [Rosner, 1986]... 

CEC has emerged as technique offering very high efficiencies in comparison to HPLC indicating superior mass transfer in the column in CEC [8,15,17,19,30]. The mass transfer processes of convection and diffusion that are the key to separation in CEC, take place in the interstitial space and so it is important to understand flow characteristics in the near vicinity of the packing particles. 

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