Material Balance

Process is one or a series of actions or operations or treatments that results in an end

product.

System is an arbitrary portion or whole of a process set out for analysis. Having defined a
system, its boundaries must be specified.

Open system is a system in which material and energy is transferred across its boundary
(in, or out or both).

Closed system is one in which there is no material transfer during the time interval of
interest but energy can cross the boundaries.

Isolated system is one in which there is no mass and energy transfer across the system
boundary.

A system boundary may be fixed with respect to the process equipment or it may be an
imaginary surface that grows or shrinks as the process goes on (e.g. toothpaste)

General equation of material balance for both reacting and non-reacting processes is:

accumulation within the system = (input through system boundaries) (output

through system boundaries) + (generation
within the system) (consumption within the system)

Material balance can refer to a balance on a system for the total mass, total moles, mass
of a chemical compound, mass of an atomic species, moles of a chemical compound,
moles of an atomic species, volume.

The transfer between mass and energy is assumed to be negligible unless in nuclear
reactions.

With respect to total mass balance, the generation and consumption terms are zero
whether a chemical reaction occurs in the system or not.

With respect to a balance on the total moles, the generation and consumption terms
should be taken into account.

In the absence of chemical reaction the generation and consumption terms do not apply
to a single chemical compound.

With respect to a balance on elements, such as H, O, N, . , the generation and

consumption terms are not involved in the balance equation.
Material balance (non-reacting systems)

In multi-component systems containing materials A, B, .:

number of moles of A
xA (mole fraction of material A) =
Total number of moles

The sum of mole fractions of all species in a stream = xi = 1

Mass of material A
wA (mass fraction of material A) =
Total Mass

The sum of mass fractions of all species in a stream = wi = 1

Mass fractions and mass flow rate are equivalent to mole fractions and molar flow rate.
These parameters may be expressed differently e.g. A free basis,( will be explained in
class)

Mole fractions can be converted to mass fractions. If the molecular weight of a material is
known then

Mass of material A = number of moles of material A multiplied by molecular weight of

Material A.

Material balance equations must be dimensionally consistent.

A system of equations in which the values of a set of variables can be uniformly scaled
such that the resulting values continue to satisfy the equations is said to be homogeneous
in those variables. Therefore the flow rates can be scaled down (rescaled) without
affecting the final solution. This is referred to as choosing a basis of the calculation.

Analysis of material balance equations

In a system with S species, the conservation law yields (S+1) material balance equation,
one for each species and one for the total mass. However there are only S independent
equation and the S+1st one can be generated from the others.
Relations among the stream variables (or any other relation) can be considered as
additional equations which can be used together with the independent material balance
equations to sole the problem.

The degree of freedom analysis

It is generally difficult to determine the equality of the number of stream variables and
the number of independent material balance equations in a multi-component system. The
degree of freedom is an index which measures this balance. The degree of freedom
analysis is simply determination of all the variables,, balance equations and relations
involved in the problem.

Degree of freedom = total number of independent stream variables total number of

independent balance equations total number of specified stream
variables total number of subsidiary relations.

If the degree of freedom is positive, the problem is said to be underspecified and the
problem cannot be solved.
If the degree of freedom is negative, the problem is overspecified, and infinite number of
solutions is possible.
If the degree of freedom is zero, the problem is correctly specified and there would be a
unique solution t the problem. (to be explained in detail in class)

There are generally more than one unit in a chemical processes. In this case you can write
material balance equations for individual units and also for the whole process. However
they are not independent. In a system with M units, each of which involves all S species,
an independent set of S material balance equations can be written for each unit. Therefore
there would be M sets of independent material balance equations. Another set of material
balance equations can be written for the whole process but this set would not be
independent. Consequently from M+1 sets of material balance equations only M sets
would be independent.
For a system of M units, if the number of species are the same (S) for all of them, total
number of independent balance equations will be (M x S).
In an underspecified or overspecified system, the problem should be reviewed in detail
carefully to determine what specifications should be added or deleted to have a unique
solution for the problem.