Mass transfer molecular diffusion

The overall process can be affected by pore diffusion and external mass transfer. Molecular diffusion coefficients DPB may be calculated by Aspen Plus. Effective pore diffusion may be estimated by the relation DP = Dpb( j,/tp) = 0.1 DPE, in which ep is the particle porosity and rp the tortuosity. Furthermore, the Thiele modulus and internal effectiveness can be calculated as ... 

Conduction heat transfer Convective heat transfer Radiative heat transfer Momentum diffusivityfkinematic viscosity) Molecular diffusivity Convective mass transfer Molecular diffusion... 

From a macroscopic standpoint molecular diffusion is mass transfer due to a concentration difference. Other types of diffusion, namely diffusion due to pressure differences (pressure diffusion) or temperature differences (thermal diffusion) will not be discussed here. The mechanism of molecular diffusion corresponds to that of heat conduction, whilst mass transfer in a flowing fluid, known for short as convective mass transfer corresponds to convective mass transfer. Mass transfer by diffusion and convection are the only sorts of mass transfer. Radiative heat transfer has no corresponding mass transfer process. 

The concentration of individual components at each point of the medium depends on convective mass transfer, molecular (or turbulent) diffusion, and the intensity of heterogeneous and homogeneous physical and chemical transformation. 

No assumptions have been invoked to obtain this result. As illustrated below, the mass flux term with respect to a stationary reference frame, V p, v, contains contributions from bulk fluid flow (i.e., convection) and molecular mass transfer via diffusion. In fact, whenever the divergence of a flux appears in a microscopic balance expression, its origin was a dot product of that flux with the outward-directed unit normal vector on the surface of the control volume, accounting for input and output due to flux across the surface that bounds V(t). The divergence of a flux actually represents a surface-related phenomenon that has been transformed into a volume integral via Gauss s law. 

For mass transfer processes another boundary layer may be defined, viz. the mass-transfer or diffusion boundary layer , 8. This is a thinner region close to the interface across which, in the case of a laminar hydrodynamic boundary layer around the crystal, mass transfer proceeds by molecular diffusion. Under these conditions the relative magnitudes of the two boundary layers may be roughly estimated from... 

On a molecular level, all molecules move and collide because of thermal energy. These molecular collisions result in mass transfer by diffusion. At every tenperature above absolute zero, molecules are always moving. When they bump into another molecule, the kinetic energy of the two molecules is redistributed and the molecules move away at different angles. With a large number of molecules, the motion of each molecule is random and the molecules tend to distribute throughout the volume available. At equilibrium there is an equal number density of molecules throughout the container. 

The two equations for the mass and heat balance, Eqs. (4.10.125) and (4.10.126) or the dimensionless forms represented by Eqs. (4.10.127), (4.10.128) and (4.10.130), consider that the flow in a packed bed deviates from the ideal pattern because of radial variations in velocity and mixing effects due to the presence of the packing. To avoid the difficulties involved in a rigorous and complicated hydrodynamic treatment, these mixing effects as well as the (in most cases negligible contributions of) molecular diffusion and heat conduction in the solid and fluid phase are combined by effective dispersion coefficients for mass and heat transport in the radial and axial direction (D x, Drad. rad. and X x)- Thus, the fluxes are expressed by formulas analogous to Pick s law for mass transfer by diffusion and Fourier s law for heat transfer by conduction, and Eqs. (4.10.125) and (4.10.126) superimpose these fluxes upon those resulting from convection. These different dispersion processes can be described as follows (see also the Sections 4.10.6.4 and 4.10.7.3) ... 

D a b D A—>-B characteristic molecular diffusivity mass transfer by diffusion ... 

Film Theory. Many theories have been put forth to explain and correlate experimentally measured mass transfer coefficients. The classical model has been the film theory (13,26) that proposes to approximate the real situation at the interface by hypothetical "effective" gas and Hquid films. The fluid is assumed to be essentially stagnant within these effective films making a sharp change to totally turbulent flow where the film is in contact with the bulk of the fluid. As a result, mass is transferred through the effective films only by steady-state molecular diffusion and it is possible to compute the concentration profile through the films by integrating Fick s law ... 

Neither the penetration nor the surface renewal theory can be used to predict mass transfer coefficients directiy because T and s are not normally known. Each suggests, however, that mass transfer coefficients should vary as the square root of the molecular diffusivity, as opposed to the first power suggested by the film theory. 

For hquid systems v is approximately independent of velocity, so that a plot of JT versus v provides a convenient method of determining both the axial dispersion and mass transfer resistance. For vapor-phase systems at low Reynolds numbers is approximately constant since dispersion is determined mainly by molecular diffusion. It is therefore more convenient to plot H./v versus 1/, which yields as the slope and the mass transfer resistance as the intercept. Examples of such plots are shown in Figure 16. 

The rate of mass transfer (qv) depends on the interfacial contact area and on the rate of mass transfer per unit interfacial area, ie, the mass flux. The mass flux very close to the Hquid—Hquid interface is determined by molecular diffusion in accordance with Pick s first law ... 

For weU-defined reaction zones and irreversible, first-order reactions, the relative reaction and transport rates are expressed as the Hatta number, Ha (16). Ha equals (k- / l ) where k- = reaction rate constant, = molecular diffusivity of reactant, and k- = mass-transfer coefficient. Reaction... 

Ordinary diffusion involves molecular mixing caused by the random motion of molecules. It is much more pronounced in gases and Hquids than in soHds. The effects of diffusion in fluids are also greatly affected by convection or turbulence. These phenomena are involved in mass-transfer processes, and therefore in separation processes (see Mass transfer Separation systems synthesis). In chemical engineering, the term diffusional unit operations normally refers to the separation processes in which mass is transferred from one phase to another, often across a fluid interface, and in which diffusion is considered to be the rate-controlling mechanism. Thus, the standard unit operations such as distillation (qv), drying (qv), and the sorption processes, as well as the less conventional separation processes, are usually classified under this heading (see Absorption Adsorption Adsorption, gas separation Adsorption, liquid separation). 

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