Problem Statement:

What is the heat duty for a mixer that mixes 9.2 moles of H2O with 1 mole of 0.2
mole fraction H2SO4 if the inlet and outlet streams are all to be at 25oC?

Solution:
The heats of mixing given in Table B.11 are recorded in terms of a variable r which is
the moles of water per mole of solute. We must first find this value of r (shown,
however, as N in the figure below) in
order to obtain the value from the table.

The energy balance for this system is

Q = n3h3 - n1h1 - n2h2

We need to find the enthalpy of each
stream relative to a reference enthalpy.
We can do this because we are always interested in a difference in enthalpies and so
the reference will always cancel out. But, we must be sure that we choose the same
reference for each stream so that the cancellation really does occur. In this case, we
choose the pure components at 25oC as the reference enthalpy relative to which we
will find the values of all the streams.

Stream 1:
Stream 1 is a mixture of sulfuric acid and water at 25oC. It's enthalpy relative to the
pure references is simply the heat of mixing for this mixture since the pure enthalpies
are identically zero by definition of the reference: hm = x1h1 + x2h2 + hmix = 0 + 0
+ hmix = hmix. Therefore, we find r for this mixture in the following way, where A
represents acid and W water:

xA = nA/(nW + nA) = 0.2 = nA/1 mol =====> nA = 0.2 mol and nW = 0.8 mol

so r = nW /nA = (0.8 mol)/(0.2 mol) = 4.0

From Table B.11, we therefore obtain h1 = -54.06 kJ/mol A

Stream 2:
This stream is pure water which is the reference state. Therefore, relative to the
reference state,

h2 = 0
Stream 3:
We now do a mass balance to find r for the outlet stream. The acid balance tells us
that 0.2 moles of A end up in the mixture and the water balance says that 9.2 + 0.8, or
10 mol of water ends up in the final mixture. Thus,
r = nW /nA = (10 mol)/(0.2 mol) = 50
From Table B.11, we obtain h3 = -73.34 kJ/mol A

Now we complete the energy balance to obtain:

Q = (0.2 mol A)(-73.34 kJ/mol A + 54.06 kJ/mol A) = -3.9 kJ