6 Material Balances for Chemical Reacting Systems

The circles illustrated in Figure 1.7 represent control volumes that we use for accounting purposes, i.e., we want
to know what goes in, what goes out, and what is accumulated or depleted. In some cases, we do not need to know
what is happening inside the control volume and we are only concerned with the inputs and outputs of the control
volume. This situation is shown in Figure 1.8 where we have shown only the inputs and outputs for the vinyl chloride
plant. If both the steady state and dynamic behavior of the systems associated with the natural gas plant, the ethylene
plant, and the vinyl chloride plant are known, the behavior of the vinyl chloride production system is also known.
However, to learn how those systems behave, we need to move down the length scales to determine the details of
the various processes. This is illustrated in Figure 1.7 where we have shown a mass transfer unit that is one element
of the vinyl chloride plant, and we have shown a bubble at which mass transfer takes place within the mass transfer
unit. In Figure 1.7, we have illustrated the concept that we must be able to keep track of molecular forms at a variety
of length scales.

FIGURE 1.8  Control volume representation of the vinyl chloride plant.

As another example of the importance of keeping track of molecular species in both large and small regions,
we consider the problem of lead contamination in California (see Figure 1.9). The title of the article by Stedling,
Dunlap, and Flegal‡ suggests that we should keep track of lead in the San Francisco Bay estuary system; how-
ever, the lead that appears in the estuary comes from several sources. Endless weathering of granite in the Sierra
Nevada mountains releases lead that is transported by streams and rivers and eventually arrives in the bay. Other
lead comes from hydraulic mine sediments transported across the Central Valley and into the bay during the 19th
century. Finally, the lead generated by the earlier use of leaded gasoline has made its way into the estuary by a
variety of paths.
Within the estuary itself, the impact of lead contamination varies. In the shallow salt marshes, seasonal floods
and daily tidal flows have a small effect on the transport of lead, and the local bio-reactors are confronted with an
unhealthy diet. Clearly, the study of lead contamination in the San Francisco Bay estuary requires keeping track of
lead over a variety of length scales as we have indicated in Figure 1.9. The analysis of this lead contamination process
in Northern California has some of the same characteristics as the analysis of water conservation in Mono Lake, of
stack gas scrubbing in a coal-fired power plant, of cell growth in a chemostat, and of vinyl chloride production. In
this text, we will develop a framework that allows us to analyze all of these systems from a single perspective based
on the axioms for the mass of multicomponent systems. This will allow us to solve mass balance problems associ-
ated with a wide range of phenomena; however, chemical engineers must remember that in addition to these physical
problems, there are economic, environmental, and safety concerns associated with every process and these concerns
must be addressed.

‡ Steding, D.J., Dunlap, C.E. and Flegal, A.R. 2000, New isotopic evidence for chronic lead contamination in the San Francisco Bay estuary
system: Implications for the persistence of past industrial lead emissions in the biosphere, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 97 (19), 11181–11186.