Handbook

Mass transfer is one (if not the) topic that sets chemical engineers and chemical product engineers apart from other types of engineers. Mass transfer explains everything from how pigments disperse in paint, to how water is removed from biogas in a dehydration column, to the discharge speed of batteries. This course will teach you how to analyse, predict and control the movement of chemical species in mixing, separation, and reaction processes.

But mass transfer is only part of the explanation. In this course you will also learn about heat transfer. Controlling the temperature of streams is critical for the safe and efficient operation of chemical processes. These principles will help you analyse and design systems for heating and cooling process streams, such as heat exchangers, condensers, reboilers. Together with the fluid dynamics (or momentum transfer) you learned in CEIC2001, heat and mass transfers explain and describe how species behave around velocity, temperature, and concentration gradients.

This course will introduce you to the physical origins and mechanism of diffusive and convective mass and heat transport,. You will also learn how one-dimensional steady-state heat or mass transfer may be mathematically described using rate equations, diffusion and mass transfer coefficients, and fluid properties in common geometries. You will also learn how heat transfer can incorporate heat generation and chemical reactions, composite walls, contact resistance and extended surfaces. A particular focus will be applying this theory to the analysis and design of heat exchangers, including the log-mean temperature difference and effectiveness (or NTU) methods.