The liquid leaving the bottom of the column

CHE 254 “Chemical Engineering Calculations”

Homework Set #1 due Friday, February 5, 2016

BamaCHEM has developed a solvent, Sorbitall TM

, that effectively removes SO2 from an

air stream using an absorption column. Our design assumes 100 mol/min of an air stream

contaminated with 10 mol% SO2 is fed to the bottom of the absorption column. It is contacted

with 100 mol/min of Sorbitall TM

fed to the top of the absorption column. Some of the solvent

evaporates into the gas so that the product gas contains 2.0 mol% Sorbitall TM

. The liquid leaving

the bottom of the column contains 5 mol% SO2.

Your consulting company has been selected to analyze our process. Follow the

systematic material balance procedure outlined in Felder and Rousseau (Wiley, 3 rd

or 4 th

edition

and also brilliantly summarized in Professor Lane’s “Magical Material Balance Procedure”):

prepare a fully labeled process flow diagram, conduct a degree of freedom analysis, write down

the material balance and other equations involving the unknown flowrates and compositions,

and present your results. Any insight about our process or suggestions for operations will be

most welcome.

In addition, prepare a visually intuitive spreadsheet simulation of the process using Excel

to conduct these calculations with the Solver tool. Determine the SO2 concentration in the

exiting gas as a function of solvent flow rate from 25 to 175 mol/min and prepare a graph for

our staff to use in operating this process. At this time we do not need a soft copy of your

simulation but require a hard copy with the solution to the 100 mol/min of Sorbitall TM

case.

You should attach all documentation to a cover letter that briefly summarizes your

results. Professor Lane has graciously provided an example report on a distillation process in

the team homework section of Blackboard. The engineers at BamaCHEM count on your

consulting company to provide a most professional report so that we can assign the highest

score possible.