Distillation is one of the most important methods of separation used in the chemical processing industry.

Although energy intensive, this method is typically the first choice among separation technologies because it is not limited by scale and is highly robust .Distillation towers and equipment can often be the most expensive parts of a chemical plant. Due to the importance and the costs associated with distillation separations, modest improvements in design can translate into millions of dollars of savings for the industry The purpose of this experiment was to study how the effect of different feed flow rates in a distillation column will affect Murphree tray efficiencies and overall efficiency. This was accomplished by running the column at a high feed flow rate and slowly and incrementally decreasing it to lower feed flow rates. At each feed rate, liquid samples were obtained from each tray to determine the molar composition profile along the column. Binary distillation is a unit operation commonly used to separate two-component mixtures. The basis for separation is the difference in volatility of the two components which allows for separation of the more volatile component into the vapour phase while the less volatile component will be predominantly in the liquid phase.. The feed consists of a mixture of components and can range from a cold liquid to a superheated vapour. The distillation stage represents a tray in the column which experiences counter current flow, where the vapour flows to the top of the column and the liquid flows down. At each tray, portions of the vapour moving upwards are condensed and portions of the liquid moving downwards evaporate. A bubble-cap tray is a specific tray with bubble caps, which force rising vapours to mix with falling liquids in seething foam. They accomplish this by allowing hot vapour to bubble up through the tray via bubble caps while supporting the liquid in the tray. The rectifying section of a distillation column refers to the section above the feed tray where the concentration of the more volatile component increases in the liquid and vapour. The stripping section of a column refers to the section below the feed tray where the concentration of the more volatile component decreases in liquid and vapour A reboiler comes from the base of the column and uses steam to vaporize a portion of the liquid to allow it to flow upwards in t There are two types of distillation; distillation without reflux and distillation with reflux. Distillation without reflux is when vapour is recovered and condensed but no liquid is returned to the column preventing further contact with rising vapours (Geankopolis, 2003). Distillation with reflux involves returning part of the condensate to the column. Distillation with reflux is also known as fractional distillation or rectification. Reboilers are heat exchangers used to provide heat to the bottom of distillation columns. They boil the liquid from the bottom of a distillation column to generate vapors which are returned to the column to drive the distillation separation Sub cooled:-the temperature of the liquid is lower than the saturation temperature for the existing pressure.Bubble temperature is the temperature at which the feed boils. Overall Mass Balance: F= D+B Overall component balance: Fzf = Dxd + Bxb Reflux Ratio:L/V = R/(R+1) Rectification Section: Yn+1 = (Ln/Vn+1) + (D/Vn+1)*xd Yn = [R/(R+1)]Xn + [1/(R+ 1)]Xd Stripping Section: Yn-1 = (Ln/Vn-1)xn (B/Vn-1)*xb Vapour-liquid equilibrium data for a binary mixture can be determined using equilibrium relations such as Henrys law or Raoults law. However, for common binary mixtures, equilibrium data can often be found in literature (i.e. Green, 1997). The equilibrium data can be combined with the mass balances described earlier to model the distillation column graphically using the McCabe-Thiele method. In the McCabe-Thiele method, the equilibrium line, 45 line and distillation column operating lines are graphed. This method assumes that there is constant molar overflow which requires that the molal heats of vaporization of the feed components are equal; for every mole of liquid vaporized, a mole of vapour is condensed and that the heat transfer from the distillation column is negligible These assumptions and the mass balances described in equations 1 through 6 are used to plot the respective operating lines for the rectifying section and stripping section. The third operating line is the q-line which represents the feed conditions. The equation for q is shown in equation 8 which can be used to find the equation of the q-ilne (equation 9). HV, HL and HF represent the enthalpies of the feed at its dew point, boiling point and feed temperature respectively which can be found from steam stables. H H F x q q = v y= x F q 1 q 1 H v H L Slope of the q-line is dependent on the feed conditions q = 0 (saturated vapour) q = 1 (saturated liquid) 0 < q < 1 (mix of liquid and vapour) q > 1 (sub cooled liquid) q < 0 (superheated vapour)

In the presence of a reboiler, the ideal number of trays is one less than the number of ideal stages determined by the
McCabe-Thiele method ( / ) =

Nt 100 Na

Nt and Na represent the ideal and actual number of trays respectively

y n y n +1 =V y n * y n+1

where yn is the vapor mole fraction for vapor leaving tray n, yn+1 is the vapor mole fraction for vapor entering tray n, and yn* is the vapor in equilibrium with the liquid leaving tray n. (complete mixing assumption in murphree tray effici).

This experiment determined two types of efficiencies: the overall column efficiency and the Murphree efficiency. Murphree efficiency is a measure of individual tray efficiency when complete mixing is assumed . It can be defined as the ratio of two quantities; the change of the vapor composition on a real tray for a certain component and the change that would occur in an equilibrium stage If there is no flux and no change in the methanol mole fraction on a tray, then the efficiency will be zero. The liquid Murphree efficiency is not necessarily equal to the vapor Murphree efficiency and is found by replacing the vapor compositions by liquid compositions in equation 13. In this experimental study, the liquid Murphree efficiency has more significance since it is the liquid compositions that are being measured Theoretically, when operating a distillation column, the column efficiency should increase as feed flow rate increases. This is a result of increased vapor-liquid contact which is based on the temperature differential and mass transfer gradient required to distribute the methanol into the vapor phase and water into the liquid phase Normally, when operating a distillation column the steam flow rate is increased as the feed flow rate increases since the reboilers higher load requires more heat.Thus, by keeping steam flow rate constant, the lower feed flow rate of 420 g/min actually showed better column efficiency since there was greater heat per unit volume being added to boil off the methanol. This explains why this flow rate exhibited the highest methanol purity in the distillateThe McCabe-Thiele diagram is a graphical solution to a distillation column with ideal equilibrium stages connected with countercurrent vapor and liquid flows (Haug-Warberg, 2005). McCabe-Thiele diagram were useful in determining the ideal number of stages for each flow rate in order to calculate the overall column efficiencies. This ideal number of stages is determined by stepping down between the columns operating lines and the equilibrium line from the molar fraction of distillate to the molar fraction of the bottoms. feed flow rate increases, so do the bottoms and distillate flow rates as shown in the overall mass balance in equation 1. The operating lines are determined from mass balances involving the feed flow rate, bottoms flow rate and distillate flow rate, thus the McCabe-Thiele diagrams do differ as feed flow rate increases. However once this studys experimental feed flow rates were converted to molar flow rates, only a narrow range of molar flow rates were actually being tested: 22.35 to 38.44 mol feed/min. This small range of feed flow rates do not affect the McCabe-Thiele diagrams as significantly as the methanol molar fractions of the distillate and bottoms. The McCabe-Thiele approach assumes complete mixing and thermodynamic equilibrium at each tray. However, experimentally this situation deviates in that an actual tray does not exhibit thermodynamic equilibrium Theoretically, increasing feed flow rate should increase the tray efficiencies as it allows for higher liquid holdup on the trays promoting longer contact between the vapor and liquid phases which allows for increased mass transfer across the liquidvapor interface on the tray
Distillation with reflux Feed and Q line Stripping

Reflux -> R-> infinity slope = 1(both lines) Minimum Reflux -> intersects with equil line Optimum reflux -> 1.2-1.5 Rm

(enriching Line)

An artificial lung is a medical device used to improve blood oxygenation. The experimental setup simulates the oxygen uptake through a membrane lung into the bloodstream. The setup consists of water (to simulate blood), oxygen, and a 0.45 m polypropylene membrane. In particular, the response of water oxygenation to water temperature and oxygen pressure is explored. Least Squares Regression is used to produce a model of these relationships. Gas pressure has a linear relationship and temperature has a quadratic relationship with water oxygenation. These results are consistent with Ficks Law and Henrys Law. Introduction An artificial lung, also known as an extracorporeal membrane oxygenator (ECMO) is a medical device that improves or replaces the respiratory action of an individuals lung. Candidates selected for ECMO often require assistance for acute respiratory complications, such as viral pneumonia, alveolar edema, as well as major trauma; without ECMO, patients have a predicted mortality rate of 6080%, making the application, and most importantly design, of the artificial lung integral for survival. Although different models exist, an artificial lung generally consists of a membrane for oxygen/carbon dioxide diffusion, a heat exchanger to maintain body temperature, a blood pump, a reservoir for drained blood, vascular cannulae, and tubes connecting the system together. The membrane in the artificial lung simulates the alveolar/capillary interface (of a lung); it acts as a phase barrier between the blood and air, allowing diffusion of oxygen from the air (gas phase) into the bloodstream (liquid phase), well as removal of carbon dioxide. Like the air passages of a patient, oxygen is transported towards the membrane pump (inhalation) which creates a pressure gradient. As the oxygen approaches the membrane, there is a decrease in oxygen velocity (due to sudden increase in cross-sectional area), and subsequently diffusion through the membrane the gas phase to the liquid phase (the reverse occurs for the uptake of carbon dioxide from the bloodstream to the atmosphere). as via from

The oxygenated blood is then placed back in to the arterial system of the patient. The rate of oxygen diffusion through a membrane is dependent upon factors such as oxygen pressure and blood temperature. It is important to know what relationships exist between these factors and oxygen diffusion in order for an artificial lung to provide optimal oxygenation and effectively serve the patient. For a microporous hydrophobic membrane, shown in Figure 2, on one side of the membrane flows gas, and on the other side flows a liquid with a higher pressure than that of the gas. Gas pressure must be lower than that of liquid so that oxygen can diffuse through the membrane into the liquid phase, and also to ensure that the aqueous solution does not penetrate the membrane and pass into the gas phase. Since the membrane is hydrophobic, the liquid does not wet the membrane. Also, to prevent the liquid from entering the pores, the pressure of the liquid must be less than the critical p difference between the two phases, PCR. This pressure difference is important to establish in order to prevent membrane damage and rupture. The objective of this laboratory was to measure and determine the relationship between oxygen diffusion through the membrane and oxygen pressure, as well as the relationship between oxygen diffusion and blood temperature. In order to determine these relationships, the critical pressure difference between the liquid and gas phase was first measured. For the experiment, a 0.45 m hydrophobic polypropylene membrane was chosen, since successful blood oxygenation through a membrane has previously been introduced and established using polypropylene membranes. Hydrophobic microporous membranes are constructed with pores ranging from 0.2 to 0.7 m, so 0.45 m porosity was chosen because it falls mid-range and so is representative of an average membrane porosity. Additionally, pure oxygen was used, instead of air, in order to eliminate diffusion of other gases and focus solely on that of oxygen. Distilled water was used as a substitute for blood as it is cheaper, more readily available, and easily disposable. Conceptually, diffusion across the membrane is governed by two principles: diffusivity across the membrane and in the phases about the membrane, and solubility of the gas in the aqueous phase. The solubility can be modelled through Henrys Law and the diffusion through Ficks law. According to Henrys Law, the partial pressure of a given gas at a certain temperature is directly proportional to the concentration of the gas in equilibrium with a given liquid of a certain type and volume. The rate of oxygen diffusion through the membrane can be defined using Ficks law of diffusion. Discussion:- In keeping with the previously mentioned detail that hydrophobic membranes require the pressure of the water side to remain greater than the oxygen side, it was necessary to calculate the critical pressure of the water side of the membrane first. Completely closing the bypass valve associated with the water pump produces a maximum pressure of 11 psig. At this maximum pressure, water transfer across the membrane remained imperceptible and it could therefore be concluded that the critical pressure of water against a 0.45 m polypropylene membrane is greater than 11 psig. In other words, the apparatus could not sufficiently pressurize water enough for critical pressure to be a concern in the experiment. Since the precise value of the critical pressure was not established, and in order to avoid the hypothetical situation of the critical pressure of water being slightly higher than the maximum producible pressure, water pressure was maintained throughout the rest of the experiment at a value of 8 psig. From this, we can establish an operational range for gas pressure between 1psig and 7psig; by traversing this entire operational range and without observing excessive gas flux across the membrane (the production of oxygen bubbles in the water portion of the apparatus), it can be concluded that the PCR between oxygen and distilled water is greater than the operational range.

Collected data was plotted and can be observed in Figure 5. From this figure, oxygen transfer appears to be a linearly increasing function of oxygen pressure in the gas portion of the membrane chamber (henceforth referred to as trend one). From the same figure, oxygen transfer also appears to be increasing with increasing temperature (henceforth referred to as trend two). Finally, the rate of oxygen absorption decreases with increasing temperature (henceforth referred to as trend three); the difference between the average oxygen transfer at 30C and 25C is 0.77mg/L, whereas between 33 C and 30C, it is merely 0.057 mg/L. The standard deviations of the oxygen transfer are 0.25mg/L, 0.21 mg/L and 0.21mg/L for 25C, 30C and 33C, respectively. As previously stated, the aqueous solution does not wet a hydrophobic membrane and so water pressure must be remain greater than gas pressure in order to immobilize gas at the gas liquid interface of the membrane. In light of this, the results of Figure 5, namely the increase of dissolved oxygen content in water with gas pressure, is consistent with expectation. If water pressure must be greater than oxygen to prevent bubbling into the aqueous phase, then it is reasonable that as the difference in pressures between the two phases is diminished, oxygen would display an increase in transfer across the membrane. The transfer of oxygen across the membrane into the aqueous phase is governed by the following equations: N = K(Cout Cin)

K=

Cin C eq Qblood ln( ) A C out C eq

Where N is the mass flux of Oxygen across the membrane, K is

the mass transfer coefficient, Qblood is the volumetric flow of blood (in this experiment, water), A is the surface area across which mass transfer occurs, which is the membrane, and Cin, Cout, and Ceq, which are the concentrations of Oxygen in water in the stream entering the membrane, the stream exiting the membrane and at equilibrium for the relevant temperature and pressure. The solubility of O2 in distilled water, and therefore Ceq, can be calculated from Henrys law with the assumption that the total oxygen dissolved in the water remains minute.

C eq =

PO2 H (T )

Where

PO2 is the partial pressure of Oxygen in the gas phase and H(T) is the temperature dependant Henrys law coefficient

(Perry, 2008). Proceeding in this way, it is noteworthy that solubility of oxygen decreases as water temperature increases. This is depicted in Figure 6 and was also confirmed by the Statistical Associating Fluid Theory Given the temperature dependance of oxygen solubility in water, one might expect that trend two would have been reversed, that is, increasing temperature would have decreased the dissolved oxygen content of water leaving the membrane. However, it appears that this effect is being counteracted by a simultaneous increase in mass transfer coefficient. As is apparent in Figure 7, a mass transfer coefficient increase with temperature was indeed experienced in this experiment. Such an increase is to be expected as the mass transfer coefficient across a membrane is proportional to the diffusivity of the solute Diffusivity is a function of temperature and indeed the Stokes- Einstein equation models diffusivity in liquids as proportional to liquid temperature.The increase of Mass transfer coefficient as a function of temperature therefore suggests that the diffusivity of oxygen in water increases as the temperature of water increases. Perhaps, the diffusivity of oxygen within the membrane phase may also be enhanced as the heated water warms the membrane. The interaction of these two factors, solubility and diffusivity, suggests a reason for the third trend. At temperatures between 25 C to 29 C, more than 18mg of oxygen can be dissolved for every liter of water. Since this solubility limit is much greater than the O2 content of the water that was actually used, it can be inferred that the influence of the solubility limit is weak within that temperature range and instead diffusivity dominates. Since the solubility limit represents a maximum value for the amount of oxygen that can be dissolved in water, as the temperature continues to rise and solubility progressively drops eventually it begins to curtail the impact of diffusivity. If this interaction is accurate, then one would expect that as temperature was raised above 33 C , trend two would be reversed and the total oxygen dissolved would begin to diminish with temperature. The simultaneous impact of diffusivity and solubility on our system suggests that any mathematical model for Oxygen absorption across such a membrane will require that the dependence between temperature and oxygen absorption will have to be nonlinear. Making use of least squares regression, the following model was attempted: Where T represents temperature and GP represents gas pressure. By constructing a 95% confidence interval for the parameters, it is found that 0 is not a plausible value for any parameters and so all parameters are significant. Data for the confidence interval and regression can be found in Table 1. According to Fried, to be effective, an artificial lung must supply at least 4.5ml of O2 (at standard conditions) for every 100ml of blood (Fried and Thomson, 1991) under maximum flow conditions. This implies that 32.1mg of O2 ought to be dissolved for every litre of blood. Blood, supplied with O2 carrying proteins, namely hemoglobin and myoglobin, is superior to water in its capacity to carry and diffuse O2. Indeed, hemolyzed blood was determined by Scholander to be able to diffuse O2 up to 8 times faster than water alone.This suggests that the mass transfer coefficient associated with the membrane were it exposed to blood in the place of water, would be much greater. Also, the solubility of Oxygen in hemolyzed blood also experiences a dramatic increase in comparison with pure water and indeed, solubility increases as the percentage of red blood cells increases (Wise and Houghton, 1968). Taking these points into consideration, it seems likely that the maximum value for dissolved oxygen will, in an experiment where water is replaced by hemolyzed blood, be much greater and occur at a temperature much greater than 32.9 C. So, though the maximum oxygen transfer of this experiment was 1.8mg/L, it remains plausible that the same operation performed with water replaced by hemolyzed blood would provide the requisite 32.1mg/L of Oxygen transfer. Conclusions An Artificial Lung is a device used to supply respiratory function instead of a lung in clinical medicine. In this experiment, water, a polypropylene membrane with a pore diameter of 0.45m and pure oxygen were used to simulate artificial lung operation. The first finding was the critical pressure difference of such a membrane is greater than 11psig. The following trends were also observed: First, oxygen concentration in water increases with increasing oxygen pressure while other variables were kept same and this trend occurs for the temperatures 25 C, 30C and 33C, Second, oxygen concentration is a function of temperature. Temperature augments diffusivity of oxygen but diminish the solubility of oxygen in water. This interplay between diffusivity and solubility means that oxygen concentration in the water exiting the membrane is a more complex function of temperature than it was of gas pressure. Diffusivity dominates in influence from 25C to 32.9C and it is expected that solubility will begin to dominate above 32.9C. Taking these trends into consideration a least squares regression based model of dissolved oxygen in water was produced. This model, equation (3b), implies that gas pressure should be maintained as large as possible and that liquid temperature should be maintained at 32.9 C. Experimental and method:-The oxygen gas was inserted through the pressure gauge into the artificial lung chamber. The chamber was divided into two regions by the presence of the polypropylene membrane. The gas remains in one area and it exits the membrane chamber, after which it passes through the gas flow meter and finally is expelled into the air. The deionized water was placed in a water tank and drawn out via a pump. The water pressure and flow rate downstream of the pump is controlled by the action of a valve. After passing through the valve, the water passes by a pressure meter and enters the

membrane chamber, specifically the region of the chamber not occupied by the aforementioned gas. The water then exits the chamber, and flows out of the system. Prior to the experiment, the critical liquid pressure pcr was determined. If critical liquid pressure is exceeded, water will be transported across the membrane into the gaseous phase. It should be noted that gas phase pressure will need to be greater than that of the aqueous phase for there to be transfer of gas through the membrane. pcr was determined experimentally by performing a run with all variables being held constant (temperature of water and flow rate/pressure of water) except for oxygen pressure (and corresponding oxygen flow rate). Oxygen pressure was gradually increased until water is seen to be dripping from the membrane, at which point pcr has been exceeded. The oxygen pressure was slowly decreased until no dripping water is detected, and the pressures of the gaseous and aqueous phases were noted in order to calculate pcr. It is important to note that the oxygen pressure had to be increased very slowly and gradually because there was a risk of membrane rupture.