Heat and Mass Transfer

The mass transfer part of the module explains the processes of mass transfer and diffusion and how they relate to engineering systems of separation and reactions. Topics to be covered include diffusion and diffusion coefficients; Fick’s 1st law and equimolar counter diffusion; Diffusion through a stationary phase; Stefan’s Law; Two film theory; Individual and overall mass transfer coefficients. Unit operations such as leach and evaporation will be covered.
The heat transfer part of this module aims to give students extend students’ knowledge of the principles of heat transfer and to provide a fundamental knowledge of design criteria for typical forms of heat exchangers used in the process industries. It will also aims to enable the students to analyse heat transfer in systems where there is change of phase; to allow the students to analyse systems where radiative heat transfer is significant/dominant and to ensure that students can design and choose appropriate equipment in their design projects.
This module introduces the 3 basic types of heat transfer: conduction, convection and radiation. For conduction, students will be introduced to Fourier’s Equation to describe conduction through different 1-D geometries and composite systems. For convection, students will be introduced Newton’s Law of Cooling and different convection correlations. For radiation, students will be introduced to Stefan-Boltzmann equation and the basic principles of radiative heat transfer (black body vs. real body vs. grey body). Also, students will be introduced to combined modes of heat transfer that are presented as thermal resistances in thermal circuits of combined heat transfer modes in series and parallel, including radiation. The students will learn about the overall heat transfer coefficient, log mean temperature and heat exchanger design. Also, students will learn in depth the design methodology of shell-and-tube and cross flow heat exchangers by applying Effectiveness-NTU and F-factor methods. Also, students’ study of heat transfer is extended to systems which are no longer steady state and have changes in phase. Student will learn about boiling (nucleate and film boiling) and condensing (Film and dropwise condensation) heat transfer. Finally, students will be introduced transient heat transfer (the lumped capacitance method). By the end of the module the students will be able to understand many everyday examples of heat transfer, as well as being able to solve many steady state heat transfer calculations that Chemical Engineers encounter on plant.
This module will allow students to understand the fundamental principles of multimode, boiling and condensing heat transfer; to analyse numerous heat transfer problems, including systems with multiple heat transfer modes, multiple layers multiple phases and of varying geometries; to understand and apply the principles of radiative heat transfer to simple well-defined systems; to know how to design and choose between different types of heat exchangers.
Complex problems will also be provided in tutorials to allow students to practice and apply the knowledge and skills learnt in lectures.
In addition to formative assessment, summative assessments will also be conducted in this module through one assignment and final examination. The semester’s assignment will compromise an open-ended problem, which will require students to pursue some additional knowledge and skills not covered in the lecture notes or in tutorial through independent learning. Final exam will be a comprehensive test covering many knowledge and skills learnt throughout this module. The key objective of these summative assessments is to measure the achievements of the module learning outcomes.