Material and Energy Balances

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Mass Balances
 Objectives
Material and Energy Balances

At the end of this chapter, you should be able

to:
• Apply material balances for simple systems
• Formulate and solve material balance
problems

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 Mass Balance
Material and Energy Balances

• Law of Conservation of Mass: Mass can neither

be created nor destroyed (except in nuclear
reactions)
• Because of this, we can write equations called
"mass balances" or "material balances“
• Any process being studied must satisfy balances
on the total amount of material, on each chemical
component, and on individual atomic species
• Later in the course, we'll use the Law of
Conservation of Energy (1st Law of
Thermodynamics) to write similar balance
equations for energy

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 General Balance Equation
Material and Energy Balances

• The system is any process or portion of a process

chosen by the engineer for analysis.
• A system is said to be "open" if material flows
across the system boundary during the interval of
time being studied; "closed" if there are no flows in
or out.

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 General Balance Equation
Material and Energy Balances

• Accumulation is usually the rate of change of holdup

within the system -- the change of material.
• It may be positive (material is increasing), negative
(material decreasing), or zero (steady state).
• If the system does not change with time, it is said to be
at steady state, and the net accumulation will be zero.
• The generation and consumption terms are the
consequence of chemical reaction. Note that while the
total mass of a system and elements (or "atoms") are
conserved, individual species are not.
• If there is no chemical reaction, the production and
consumption terms are typically zero.

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 Forms of Balance Equations
Material and Energy Balances

• Differential Form
– All the terms are rates, so the balance describes
an instant in time.
– Usually the best choice for a continuous
process.
– When formulated for an instant in time, the result
is an ordinary differential equation.

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 Forms of Balance Equations
Material and Energy Balances

• Integral Form
– (Also called cumulative form) Written using total
amounts as terms, so it describes the overall
effect between two time instants.
– Often a good choice for batch processes.
– In this class, most problems will be differential
balances on steady state systems. Consequently,
accumulation will usually be zero.
– The flow terms can usually be easily identified
from the problem statement. If the process is
batch, these may be zero.
– Production and consumption are almost never
present when balancing total mass, and are only
present in component balances when reaction
occurs.

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

• Example 1: The figure describes a mixing

tank problem. The operation is at steady
state. Find all flows and compositions.

F2 40
F1 Ib/hr C F3
100 Ib/hr 150 Ib/hr
50wt% A 75% A
50wt% B F4 25% C
Product

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

Start with the general balance equation:

• Since we are doing a total material balance, the

production and consumption terms are zero.
• We'll make a "differential" balance and use flow rates
(lb/hr) for all terms.
• Under steady-state conditions, the accumulation is
zero.
• The total balance equation reduces to
– INPUT = OUTPUT

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

Total material balance:

F1 + F2 + F3 = F4
F4 = 100 + 40 + 150 = 290 Ib/hr

• To determine the composition, again start

with the general balance & simplify - steady
state & no reaction - no generation &
consumption: INPUT = OUTPUT

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

• Component A balance equation

0 = F1 x A1 + F2 x A 2 + F3 x A3 − F4 x A 4
= 100 × 0.5 + 40 × 0 + 150 × 0.75 − 290 x A 4
• Solving for xA4 , we get xA4 = 0.56 lbm A/lbm

• Component B balance equation

0 = F1 xB1 + F2 xB 2 + F3 xB 3 − F4 xB 4
= 100 × 0.5 + 40 × 0 + 150 × 0 − 290 xB 4
• Solving for xB4 , we get xB4 = 0.17 lbm B/lbm

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

• Component C balance equation

0 = F1 xC1 + F2 xC 2 + F3 xC 3 − F4 xC 4
= 100 × 0 + 40 × 1.0 + 150 × 0.25 − 290 xC 4

• Solving for xC4, we get xC4 = 0.27 lbm C/lbm

• Check: xA4 + xB4 + xC4 = 0.56 + 0.17 + 0.27

= 1.0

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

• In the example, we wrote and solved

– one total material balance and three
component balances,
– for a total of four balance equations
describing a three component system.
– Is this the right number?
• We could not have written more.
• We could have written one less and gotten the
final value by difference -- because only three of
the balance equations are linearly independent.

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 Example – Mixing tank
Material and Energy Balances

• In general, need NC balances where NC is the

number of components. Try, whenever possible, to
write the easy balance equations!
• In the example, this might have lead to the
sequence:
• Write the overall material balance -- only addition is
required
• Write the component B balance -- fewer non-zero
terms
• Write for either A or C
• Get solution by difference
• Balances can also be written on atoms -- which like
total mass, are always conserved. These "atom
balances" are useful in certain classes of balance
problems where reaction is present.

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 Example – Integral form
Material and Energy Balances

Exercise: The figure describes a batch mixing

process. Find the amount of product and its
composition
200 g
0.400 g
CH3OH/g m (g)
0.600 g H2O/g Mixer x (g
150 g CH3OH/g)
0.700 g (1-x) (g
CH3OH/g H2O/g)
0.300 g H2O/g

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 Mass balances
Material and Energy Balances

• In the examples, we wrote and solved total

(material) balance and component (e.g. in
example 1- species A and methanol in example
2) balances to find the solution.
• If we have a material balance problem, which
equations are to be used?
• Should we write material balances for the
components, the elements making up the
components, total material or some combination
of these?

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 Mass balances
Material and Energy Balances

• Consider the mass of all material entering and

leaving; one equation: INPUT = OUTPUT
• All the components in all the streams are involved,
hence this equation may have the most unknowns
• If molar units have been used throughout the
solution, need to do some legwork to use this
equation; it has to be written in mass units
• Reasonable to expect that component balances
should be the most direct way of solving for the
unknowns.
• However, chemical reactions would be the reason
that component balances are not always the most
useful.

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 Mass balances
Material and Energy Balances

• Unless we have independent information about the

reactions in the system (conversion or yield) they
become additional unknowns and the component
balance is no longer useful.
• For element balances, must consider all the forms
in which the element occurs in the streams.
• Element may change form but there is no
generation or consumption so that element
balances have the simple form: Input = Output

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 Mass balance - Guidelines
Material and Energy Balances

• To review, for solving a problem:

– Start with a general balance equation
– Eliminate negligible terms (based on the
problem description)
– Define the remaining terms (use variables first
to get a more general solution before you plug
in numbers)
– Solve for unknowns.

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 Conclusions
Material and Energy Balances

• You have learnt

– To apply material balances for simple
systems
– To formulate and solve material balance
problems of simple systems

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