Principle of Chemical

Engineering I
First Year, First Semester
European Credit Transfer System ECTS

Dr.Firas Salim Mohammed Al-Ghulami

Head of Chemical Engineering Department
Technical College of Engineering
Duhok Polytechnic University
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 Course Description
1. Introduce the basic principles and calculation techniques
used in the field.
2. Introduce the fundamental application of material and
energy balances in chemical engineering.
3. It exposes the problems in material and energy balances
that arise in relation to problems involving chemical
reactors

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 Learning Objectives
1. Acquire skills in quantitative problem solving, specifically the ability to think quantitatively
(including numbers and units)
2. Become familiar with the principal features of design and operation principles of a range
of items of plant.
3. Know general principles used in process engineering, particularly stoichiometry, material
and energy balances, gas laws, and phase equilibria
4. Understand processes typical of those found in the chemical process industries

Workloads No. Grade 25%

Seminars 0 0
Assignment 1 2%
Homework 2 8%
Reports 0 0%
Quizzes 3 15%
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Definitions of Chemical Engineering
A definition in a standard dictionary states
“Chemical engineering is a branch of engineering that involves the Design and Operation of
large-scale Chemical plants, Petrochemical Refineries.

“Chemical engineering is concerned with processes that cause substances to undergo

required changes in their chemical or physical composition, structure, energy content, or
physical state.”

Chemical engineering creatively combines the three basic Physical sciences – Chemistry,
Physics, and Biology – along with Mathematics to address the world’s needs by creating new
Technology and Solving Problems in existing technology.

Chemical engineering is the profession in which a knowledge of Mathematics, Chemistry,

Biology and other natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with
judgment to develop economic ways of using materials and energy for the benefit of mankind.

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The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has suggested the following definition

[Chemical engineers] use science and Mathematics, especially Chemistry, Biochemistry,

Applied Mathematics and Engineering Principles, to take laboratory or conceptual ideas and
turn them into value added products in a cost effective, safe (including environmental) and
cutting edge process. From the development of smaller, faster computer chips to innovations
in recycling, treating disease, cleaning water, and generating energy, the processes and
products that chemical engineers have helped create touch every aspect of our lives.

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Fundamental Topics in Chemical Engineering
Material balances describe how material moves in and out of a process and help us
determine how much material is needed to produce the desired products, as well as the
amount of specific materials leaving the process, including both the desired products and
undesirable products such as pollutants or byproducts
Fluid mechanics describe the movement of fluids and help us design systems to produce
such movement (e.g., pump-pipeline systems).
Heat transfer describes how heat transfers and helps us design systems (e.g., heat
exchangers) to produce the heating or cooling of chemical materials to sustain desired
chemical reactions and to recover energy from high-temperature processes.
Mass transfer describes how molecules move relative to each other and helps us design
systems to produce the mixing or separation of chemical species, using such strategies as
distillation boiling a mixture to preferentially remove some substances from the mixture that
boil off in higher proportion than do other substances in that mixture.
evaporation removing a substance from a mixture by vaporizing.
drying removing (by evaporation) all liquid from a material 7
filtration separating solid particles from a suspending liquid or gas using a filter
Dr.Firas Salim Mohammed Al-Ghulami
liquid-liquid transfer transferring a substance from one liquid mixture to another liquid by
contacting the two liquids (the two liquids must be immiscible, i.e., must not dissolve into one
another), also called “extraction”
gas-liquid transfer transferring a substance from a gas mixture to a liquid by contacting the
gas with a liquid into which the desired substance preferentially dissolves, also called
“absorption
Reaction engineering describes how fast chemical reactions occur and helps us design
systems (e.g., reactors) to produce desired quantities of material by reactions.
Process control describes how the outputs of complex systems respond to changes in input
conditions and helps us design and optimize systems to hold product quality within desired
specifications and to lower operating costs.
Materials describes how materials respond to mechanical and chemical stress and helps us
select and fabricate materials with unique properties for desired products and processing
equipment
Economics describes the variables that affect the costs of chemical processing equipment
and helps us predict the costs of various design and operating options.
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The list of chemical engineering applications includes
Traditional areas, for example, mining, pulp and paper, oil refining, materials (rubber,
plastics, etc.), and environment.
Nontraditional areas such as microelectronics (semiconductor manufacturing),
biotechnology (pharmaceutical production processes, genetic engineering, etc.),
and nanotechnology.
Other areas, for example, medicine, consulting, law, and business

A similarity among all chemical engineering systems is that they involve processes designed
to transform raw materials (generally, low value) into desired products (with added value).

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 A typical problem in the design of a new process or the modification of an existing process is
as follows:
1. The amount and the properties of the raw materials.
2. Calculate the amount of the products and determine their properties or vice versa
A chemist in your company’s research and development division has discovered that if he
mixes two reactants in a certain proportion at an elevated temperature, he obtains a
product significantly more valuable than both reactants. The company contemplates
manufacturing the product using a process based on this reaction.
At this point the matter becomes an engineering problem or, more precisely, hundreds of
engineering problems.

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What Is A Chemical Process
One of the things that chemical engineers do is to build upon laboratory-type manual
processes to create useful automated processes

Reaction Flask
Chemical Reaction
Engineering Mass Transfer
Delivery Heat Transfer (Separation) 11
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 Dimensions, Units, and Their Conversion
Dimensions are our basic concepts of measurement such as length, time, mass,
temperature, and so on;
All physical quantities have a numerical value (e.g., 6.51) and a unit (indicating what there
are 6.51 of, such as feet, grams, seconds, etc.).
Two systems of units in use in most of the industrialized world are:
1. The Metric System, formally called System International Unites, called SI units, a base
unit measurement are related to that original base unit by powers of ten. For example, the
measure of Length can be a meter, a decimeter (0.1 meters), a centimeter (0.01 meters),
a millimeter (0.001 meters), a kilometer (1000 meters), and so on.
2. The American engineering system is based on cultural definitions of various
measurements from British history. (yard being the length from the king’s nose to the tip of
his middle finger on his fully-extended right arm) For example, there are 12 inches per
foot, 3 feet per yard, and 5,280 feet per mile.

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Dimensions and their respective units are classified as
• Fundamental (or basic) dimensions/units are those that can be measured independently
and are sufficient to describe essential physical quantities.
• Derived dimensions/units are those that can be developed in terms of the fundamental
dimensions/units.

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Table 1.2 American Engineering (AE) System Units

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Figure 1.1 Relation between the basic dimensions (in boxes) and various derived dimensions
(in ellipses).

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Table 2.3. SI Prefixes

Operations with Units

When quantities with units are added or subtracted, they need to be expressed in the same
units. For example,

On the other hand,

can be performed (because the dimensions are the same, mass) only after the units are
transformed to be the same, either pounds, grams, or ounces, or some other mass unit.

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Multiplication and Division
You can multiply or divide unlike units at will such as 50(kg)(m)/(s)
but you cannot cancel or merge units unless they are identical. Thus, 3 m2/60 cm can be
converted to 3 m2/0.6 m, and then to 5 m, but in m/s2, the units cannot be cancelled or
combined.
Example 1.1 Add the following: (a) 1 foot + 3 seconds (b) 1 horsepower + 300 watts
Solution The operation indicated by 1 ft + 3 s
has no meaning since the dimensions of the two terms are not the same.

In the case of 1 hp + 300 watts

the dimensions are the same (energy per unit time), but the units are different. You must
transform the two quantities into like units, such as horsepower or watts, before the addition
can be carried out. Since 1 hp = 746 watts,
746 watts + 300 watts = 1046 watts
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Conversion of Units and Conversion Factors
To convert a quantity expressed in terms of one unit to its equivalent in terms of another
unit, you will need to multiply the given quantity by the conversion factor (new unit/old unit)

Convert 30 mg/s to its equivalent in kg/h.

Conversion of 30 lbm/s to its equivalent in kg/min

1 kg = 2.205 lbm 1 min = 60 s
Conversion of a volume of 5 ft3 to its equivalent in m3:
1 m = 3.28 ft

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 Example 1 (a) Convert 2 km to miles. (b) Convert 400 in.3/day to cm3/min.
Solution (a) One way to carry out the conversion is to look up a direct conversion factor,
namely 1.61 km = 1 mile:

Another way is to use conversion factors you know

1 km = 105 cm
1 in. = 2.54 cm
1 ft = 12 in.
1 mil = 5280 ft
In part (b) note that not only are the numbers in the conversion of inches to centimeters
raised to a power, but the units also are raised to the same power.

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Mass = M Length = L
Area = L2 Volume = L3
Velocity = L/t Acceleration = L/t2
Force = M*L/t2 Energy/Work/Heat = M*L2/t2
Power = M*L2/t3 Pressure = M/(L*t2)
Density = M/L3 Viscosity = M/(L*t)
Diffusivity L2/s Thermal conductivity = M*L/(t3*T)
Specific Heat Capacity L2/(T*t2)
Specific Enthalpy, Gibbs Energy L2/t2
Specific Entropy L2/(t2*T)

Dr.Firas Salim Mohammed Al-Ghulami 21

 Example 2
An example of a semiconductor is ZnS with a particle diameter of 1.8 nanometers (nm).
Convert this value to (a) dm (decimeters) and (b) inches.
1 nm = 10–9 m 1 m = 10 dm 1 m = 39.37 in.

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 Example 3
In biological systems, production rate of glucose is 0.6 μg mol/(mL)(min). Determine the
production rate of glucose for this system in the units of lb mol/(ft3)(day).
Solution
Basis: 1 min 1g = 106 µg 1 lb mol = 454 g mol 1 L = 1000 mL 1 L = 3.531×10–2 ft3

𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕
𝑶𝒍𝒅 𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕

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 The Mole and Molecular Weight
mole is a certain amount of material corresponding to a specified number of molecules,
atoms, electrons, or other specified types of particles.
In the SI system a mole is composed of 6.022 x 1023 molecules (Avogadro’s number). To
convert the number of moles to mass and the mass to moles, we make use of the
molecular weight – the mass per mole:

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 Symbols

The following symbols to represent some of the quantities we have used in chemical
engineering:
m = the mass of a quantity of material
mA = the mass of a particular chemical species (in this case, species A), either as a pure
material or within a mixture
n = the number of moles of a material
nA = the number of moles of a particular chemical species (in this case, species A) either as
a pure material or within a mixture
MWA = the molecular weight of a particular chemical species (in this case, species A)
The molecular weight of a chemical compound (e.g., species A) can be used to find the
mass of a known number of moles of species A
mA = MWA × nA
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 Example 4. Use of Molecular Weights to Convert Mass to Moles
If a bucket holds 2.00 lb of NaOH:
a. How many pound moles of NaOH does it contain?
b. How many gram moles of NaOH does it contain?
Solution
You can convert pounds to pound moles, and then convert the values to the SI system of
units. Look up the molecular weight of NaOH, or calculate it from the atomic weights. (It is
40.0 ) Note that the molecular weight is used as a conversion factor in this calculation:

1 lb mol = 454 g mol

Check your answer by converting the 2.00 lb of NaOH to the SI system first and completing
the conversion to gram moles:

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Dr.Firas Salim Mohammed Al-Ghulami
 The atomic weight of an element is the mass of an atom based on the scale that assigns a
mass of exactly 12 to the carbon isotope 12C.
A compound is composed of more than one atom, and the molecular weight of the
compound is nothing more than the sum of the weights of atoms of which it is composed.

Example 5. Use of Molecular Weights to Convert Moles to Mass

How many pounds of NaOH are in 7.50 g mol of NaOH?
Solution 1 lb mol = 454 g mol
This problem involves converting gram moles to pounds. The MW of NaOH is 40.0:

Note the conversion between pound moles and gram moles was to proceed from SI to the
AE system of units. Could you first convert 7.50 g mol of NaOH to grams of NaOH, and
then use the conversion of 454 g mol = 1 lb mol to get pounds of NaOH?

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 Example 6. Average Molecular Weight of Air
Calculate the average molecular weight of air, assuming that air is 21% O2 and 79% N2.

Total 29.0 g air

The total mass of 1 g mol of air is equal to 29.0 g, which is called the average molecular
weight of air.

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 Example 7: What is the molecular weight of the following cell of a superconductor material?
(The figure represents one cell of a larger structure.)

The molecular weight of the cell for each mole is 1764.3 g/g mol.
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