UTKALMANI GOPABANDHU INSTITUTE

OF ENGINEERING, ROURKELA

LECTURE NOTES
PREPARED BY- SUBASINI JENA
SUBJECT- MASS TRANSFER-II

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING
HUMIDIFICATION

Humidification is the process of increasing the moisture content of the air. Machines which
perform this function are used to create ideal climactic conditions in various industrial
applications, from food production and transportation to storage of perishable items.

Humidifiers add moisture to the air when it is too dry. Generally, people use humidifiers in the
wintertime to combat the dryness of winter air.

A dehumidifier takes moisture out of the air when it is too humid. Dehumidifiers are used
during the spring and summer. The two common reasons people use a dehumidifier is to control
seasonal allergies and eliminate the sticky, stale feeling a house can have when humidity is
high.

Crystallization

Crystallization can be defined as the process through which the atoms/molecules of a substance
arrange themselves in a well-defined three-dimensional lattice and consequently, minimize the
overall energy of the system. When a substance is subjected to crystallization, its atoms or
molecules bind together through well-defined angles.

On adding a solid substance in a liquid and stirring it, the solid dissolves in the fluid. But when
added more and more solid to the liquid, a point comes after which no more solid dissolves in
the liquid. This point is called a saturation point and the fluid is called a saturation solution.

Application of Crystallization:

• Purification of seawater

• Separation of alum crystals from impure samples

• In the pharmaceutical industry, crystallization is used as a separation and purification

process for the synthesis and isolation of co-crystals, pure active pharmaceutical
ingredients (API), controlled release pulmonary drug delivery, and separation of chiral
isomers.
What is the Solution?

A solution is a homogeneous mixture of two or more pure substances on molecular level whose
composition can vary within certain limits. A solution has two components (substances) known
as solute and the solvent.

What is Supersaturated Solution?

A supersaturated solution contains more dissolved solute than required for preparing
a saturated solution and can be prepared by heating a saturated solution, adding more solute,
and then cooling it gently. Excess dissolved solute crystallizes by seeding supersaturated
solution with a few crystals of the solute.

DRYING
The term drying refers generally to the removal of moisture from a substance. It is one of the
oldest, most commonly used and most energy consuming unit operation in the process
industries. Drying is often necessary in various industrial operations particularly in chemical
process industries to remove moisture from a wet solid, a solution or a gas to make it dry and
choice of drying medium is depends on the chemical nature of the materials. Three basic
methods of drying are used today 1) sun drying, a traditional method in which materials dry
naturally in the sun, 2) hot air drying in which matrials are exposed to a blast of hot air and 3)
freeze drying, in which frozen materials are placed in a vacuum chamber to draw out the water.
The fundamental nautre of all drying porcess is the removal of volatile substances (mainly
moisture) from mixture to yield a solid product. In general drying is accomplished by thermal
techniques and thus involves the application of heat, most commonly by convection from
current of air. Throughout the convective drying of solid materials, two processes occur
simultaneously namely, transfer of energy from the local environemnt in the dryer and transfer
of moisture from within the solid. Therefore this unit operation may be considered as
simultaneous heat and mass transfer operation. Drying processes and equipment may be
categorised according to several criteria, incuding the nature of material and the method of heat
supply and the method of operation. For example In the sugar industry washed and centrifuged
sugar crystals are dried to get finisehd product for packing. Drying is an important operation
in food processing. Milk is dried in a spray chamber to produce milk powder. All the above
examples indicates that wet material loses moisture in direct contact with hot air/gas. The hot
air/gas supplies the energy required for drying and also carries away the moisture released by
the solid. For heat sensitive materials much of the resistance to drying resides within the
material. Unduly high heat and mass transfer rates applied at the surface only result in
overheating or over drying of the surface layer resulting in quality problems without major
increase in the drying kinetics. The rate of migration of the moisture from within the solid to
the evaporation front often controls the overall drying rate. Therefore, drying may be defined
as an operation in which the liquid, generally water, present in a wet solid is removed by
vaporization to get a relatively liquid free solid product. Drying of a solid does not demand or
ensure complete removal of the moisture. Sometimes it is desirable to retain a little mositure
in the solid after drying. Dryer and drying process selection for a specific operation is a
complex problem, and many factors have to be taken into account. Though, the overall
selection and design of a drying system for a perticular material is dictated by the desire to
achieve a favourable combination of a product quality and process economics. In general, with
respect to the rate and total drying time, dryer performance is dependent on the factors such as
air characteristics, product cheracteristics, eqipment characteristics. But despite the many
commercially available drying techniques at present most dehydrated products (i.e. fruits and
vegetables) are still produced by the method of hot air drying. Because this is regarded as the
simplest and most economical . There are other water/liquid removal processes such as
filtration, settling, centrifugation, supercritical extraction of water from gels etc. In all these
operations liquid is removed by mechanical means but a considerable amount of liquid is still
retained in the solid. This residual liquid can be removed by drying. One such example is the
production of condensed milk involves evaporation, but the production of milk powder
involves drying. The phase change and production of a soild phase as end product are essential
features of the drying process. Drying is an essential operation in chemical, agricultural,
biotechnology, food, polymer, pharmaceutical, pulp and paper, mineral processing, and wood
processing industries.

PHYSICAL MECHANISM OF DRYING

Drying does not mean only removal of the moisture but during the process, physical structure
as well as the apperance has to be preserved. Drying is basically governed by the principles of
transport of heat and mass. When a moist solid is heated to an appropriate temperature,
moisture vaporizes at or near the solid surface and the heat required for evaporating moisture
from the drying product is supplied by the external drying medium, usually air or a hot gas .
Drying is a diffusional process in which the transfer of moisture to the surrounding medium
takes place by the evaporation of surface moisture, as soon as some of the surface moisture
vaporizes, more moisture is transported from interior of the solid to its surface. This transport
of moisture within a solid takes place by a variety of mechanisms depending upon the nature
and type of the solid and its state of aggregation. Different types of solids may have to be
handled for drying crystalline, granular, beads, powders, sheets, slabs, filter-cakes etc. The
mechanism of moisture transport in different solids may be broadly classified into (i) transport
by liquid or vapour diffusion (ii) capillary section, and (iii) pressure induced transport. The
mechanism that dominates depends on the nature of the solid, its pore structure and the rate of
drying. Different mechanisms may come into play and dominate at different stages of drying
of the same material.

The following term are commonly used in designing of drying systems.

Moisture content of a substance which exerts as equilibrium vapour pressure less than of the
pure liquid at the same temperature is refered to as bound moisture. .

Moisture content of the solid which exters an equillibrium vapour pressure equal to that of pure
liquid at the given temperature is the unbound moisture.

The moisture content of solid in excess of the equilibrium moisture content is refered as free
moisture. During drying, only free moisture can be evporated. The free moisture content of a
solid depends upon the vapour concentration in the gas.

The moisture contents of solid when it is in equilibrium with given partial pressure of vapour
in gas phase is called as equilibrium moisture content . Similalry, the moisture content at which
the constant rate drying peroid ends and the falling rate drying period starts is called critical
moisture content . During the constant rate drying period , the moisture evporated per unit time
per unit area of drying surface remains constant and in falling rate drying period the amount
of moisture evporated per unit time per unit area of drying surface continuously decreases.

CLASSIFICATION OF DRYERS

Drying equipment is classified in different ways, according to following design and operating
features.
It can be classified based on mode of operation such as batch or continuous, In case of batch
dryer the material is loaded in the drying equipment and drying proceeds for a given period of
time, whereas, in case of continuous mode the material is continuously added to the dryer and
dried material continuously removed. In some cases vacuum may be used to reduce the drying
temperature. Some dryers can handle almost any kind of material, whereas others are severely
limited in the style of feed they can accept. Drying processes can also be categorized according
to the physical state of the feed such as wet solid, liquid, and slurry. Type of heating system
i.e. conduction, convection, radiation is another way of categorizing the drying process. Heat
may be supplied by direct contact with hot air at atmospheric pressure, and the water vaporized
is removed by the air flowing. Heat may also be supplied indirectly through the wall of the
dryer from a hot gas flowing outside the wall or by radiation. Dryers exposing the solids to a
hot surface with which the solid is in contact are called adiabatic or direct dryers, while when
heat is transferred from an external medium it is known as non-adiabatic or indirect dryers.
Dryers heated by dielectric, radiant or microwave energy are also non adiabatic. Some units
combine adiabatic and non adiabatic drying; they are known as direct-indirect dryers.

To reduce heat losses most of the commercial dryers are insulated and hot air is recirculated to
save energy. Now many designs have energy-saving devices, which recover heat from the
exhaust air or automatically control the air humidity. Computer control of dryers in
sophisticated driers also results in important savings in energy.

DRYING EQUIPMENT

Batch Type Dryers

Tray Dryer

Schematic of a typical batch dryer is shown in figure 2.1. Tray dryers usually operate in batch
mode, use racks to hold product and circulate air over the material. It consists of a rectangular
chamber of sheet metal containing trucks that support racks. Each rack carries a number of
trays that are loaded with the material to be dried. Hot air flows through the tunnel over the
racks. Sometimes fans are used on the tunnel wall to blow hot air across the trays. Even b affles
are used to distribute the air uniformly over the stack of trays. Some moist air is continuously
vented through exhaust duct; makeup fresh air enters through the inlet . The racks with the
dried product are taken to a tray-dumping station.
 Figure: Tray dryer

These types of dryers are useful when the production rate is small. They are used to dry wide
range of materials, but have high labor requirement for loading and unloading the materials,
and are expensive to operate. They find most frequent application for drying valuable products.
Drying operation in case of such dryers is slow and requires several hours to complete drying
of one batch. With indirect heating often the dryers may be operated under vaccum. The trays
may rest on hollow plates supplied with steam or hot water or may themselves contain spaces
for a heating fluid. Vapour from the solid may be removed by an ejector or vacuum pump .
Freeze-dryinginvolves the sublimation of water from ice under high vacuum at temperatures
well below 0°C. This is done in special vacuum dryers for drying heat-sensitive products.

Pan Dryer

The atmospheric pan drier has a jacketed round pan in which a stirrer or mill revolves slowly,
driven from below. The slow moving stirrer exposes fresh surfaces and thereby raises the rate
of evaporation and, hence, of drying. The pan drier is a batch machine and is limited to small
batches. Pan driers may be used first to evaporate a solution to its crystallizing concentration
and then can function as a crystallizer by sending cold water instead of steam into the jacket.
The effect of the stirrer during crystallization prevents the growth of large crystals and
promotes formation of small, uniform crystals. The mother liquor is then drained off and the
crystals dried in the same apparatus.

Agitated Vacuum Dryer

The agitated vacuum dryer is one of the most versatile in the range and is similar in principle
to a pan dryer. The dryer essentially consists of a jacketed cylindrical vessel arranged for hot
water, steam or a suitable thermal fluid flow through the jacket for heating. Doors are provided
on the shell, at the top for loading the feed material and at the bottom for discharging. The
dryers are available in variety of sizes. The entire drying chamber is well machined to insure
small clearance with the agitator blade. Thus ensures proper shuffling of the material and
avoids localized over heating. Due to the agitation of the product in the agitated vacuum dryer
the drying time is substantially reduced. A choice of the agitator design which can be arranged
with or without heating depends on the material characteristics and process requirements.
While designing the shell one has to consider the external pressure and the shaft designing
includes fatigue consideration. Designing the impeller needs consideration of characteristics of
the material before and after drying.

Continuous Dryer

Rotary Dryer

The rotary drier is basically a cylinder, inclined slightly to the horizontal, which may be rotated,
or the shell may be stationary, and an agitator inside may revolve slowly. In either case, the
wet material is fed in at the upper end, and the rotation, or agitation, advances the material
progressively to the lower end, where it is discharged. Figure (2.2) shows a direct heat rotary
drier. Typical dimensions for a unit like this are 9 ft diameter and 45 ft length. In direct-heat
revolving rotary driers, hot air or a mixture of flue gases and air travels through the cylinder.
The feed rate, the speed of rotation or agitation, the volume of heated air or gases, and their
temperature are so regulated that the solid is dried just before discharge.
 Figure : Counter current direct heat rotary dryer

The shell fits loosely into a stationary housing at each end. The material is brought to a chute
that runs through the housing; the latter also carries the exhaust pipe. The revolving shell runs
on two circular tracks and is turned by a girth gear that meshes with a driven pinion. The
inclination is one in sixteen for high capacities and one in thirty for low ones. As the shell
revolves, the solid is carried upward one-fourth of the circumference; it then rolls back to a
lower level, exposing fresh surfaces to the action of the heat as it does so. Simple rotary driers
serve well enough when fuel is cheap. The efficiency is greatly improved by placing
longitudinal plates 3 or 4 in. wide on the inside of the cylinder. These are called lifting flights.
These carry part of the solid half-way around the circumference and drop it through the whole
of a diameter in the central part of the cylinder where the air is hottest and least laden with
moisture. By bending the edge of the lifter slightly inward, some of the material is delivered
only in the third quarter of the circle, producing a nearly uniform fall of the material throughout
the cross section of the cylinder. The heated air streams through a rain of particles. This is the
most common form of revolving rotary cylinder. It has high capacity, is simple in operation,
and is continuous.

Introduction to Extraction
• Liquid-liquid extraction (also known as solvent extraction) involves the separation of
the constituents (solutes) of a liquid solution by contact with another insoluble liquid.

• Solutes are separated based on their different solubilities in different liquids.

• Separation is achieved when the substances constituting the original solution is

transferred from the original solution to the other liquid solution
 • The simplest liquid-liquid extraction involves only a ternary (i.e.3 components) system.

• The solution which is to be extracted is called the feed, and the liquid with which the
feed is contacted is the solvent.

• The feed can be considered as comprising the solute A and the "carrier" liquid C.
Solvent S is a pure liquid.

• During contact, mass transfer of A from the feed to the solvent S occurs, with little
transfer of C to S.

• The solvent (with the solute) is then permitted to separate from the carrier liquid.

• The solvent-rich product of the operation is called the extract, and the residual liquid
from which solutes has been removed is the raffinate

• In some operations, the solutes are the desired product, hence the extract stream is the
desirable stream.

• In other applications, the solutes may be the contaminants that need to be removed, and
in this instance the raffinate is the desirable product stream.

Application of Extraction
• Extraction processes are well suited to the petroleum industry because of the need to
separate heat-sensitive liquid feeds according to chemical type (e.g. aliphatic, aromatic,
naphthenic) rather than by molecular weight or vapour pressure.

• Other major applications exist in the biochemical or pharmaceutical industry, where

emphasis is on the separation of antibiotics and protein recovery.

• In the inorganic chemical industry, they are used to recover high-boiling components
such as phosphoric acid, boric acid, and sodium hydroxide from aqueous solutions.

Examples of Extraction
• Extraction of methylacrylate from organic solution with perchlorethylene.

• Extraction of benzylalcohol from a salt solution with toluene.

• Removing of H2S from LPG with MDEA.

• Extraction of caprolactam from ammonium sulfate solution with benzene.

• Extraction of methanol from LPG with water.

Liquid-Liquid Extraction

Solvent

Solution

Extract(E)

Raffinate(R)
 • Extraction – is the process by which a solute is transferred from one phase to a new
phase.

• Liquid-liquid extraction, also known as solvent extraction and partitioning, is a method

to separate compounds based on their relative solubility's in two different immiscible
liquids, usually water and an organic solvent.

• Process of dissolved substance transferring from one phase to another phase, which are
immiscible or restrictedly miscible, is named liquid-liquid –partition or partition
between two phase of liquids.

Distribution law
• At equilibrium, the ratio of the concentrations of the solute in the two phases is given
by CE/CR = K

• The distribution constant K, must be greater than 1 if the desired product is extract
stream.

• The distribution constant K, must be lesser than 1 if the desired product is raffinate
stream.

Distribution coefficient
K = mass fraction solute in E phase
mass fraction solute in R phase
Liquid–liquid extraction (LLE), also known as solvent extraction and partitioning, is a method to
separate compounds based on their relative solubilities in two different immiscible liquids, usually
water and an organic solvent.
Mechanical Draft Towers:

forced draft towers and induced draft towers Fans are used to move air through the tower in
mechanical draft cooling towers. Two types of mechanical draft towers are there, namely,
forced draft tower and induced draft tower.

Forced draft towers: It can be seen from Figure that it has one or more fans located at the tower
bottom to push air into tower.
Advantages: (a) A part of the velocity head of air thrown by the blower is converted to pressure
head on entering into the tower. It makes energy efficient than induced draft. (b) Less
susceptible to vibrations as fans are installed near the ground.

Disadvantages: (a) Air flow through the packing may not be uniform (b) Some of the warm
and humid air may be recirculated back. Recirculation rate becomes low if the wind velocity
is high. It is not popular except for small capacities.

Induced draft towers: One or more fans are installed at the top of the tower. Depending on the
air inlet and flow pattern, induced draft towers are of two types, cross-flow and counter flow
towers.

Cross-current and counter-current Cross-flow induced draft cooling tower supplies horizontal air flow
along the packed height and requires less motor horse power than the counter-flow type. Additional
‘cells’ may be added to raise the capacity. The schematic of induced draft counter-flow and cross-flow
cooling towers are presented in Figure.