CHE 410 (2)

UNIT PROCESSES AND UNIT OPERATIONS

Engr. Lina D. Dela Cruz

Chemical Engineering Department
Technological Istitute of the Philippines, Manila
UNIT PROCESSES AND UNIT
OPERATIONS
 In an inexact but expressive manner we may define
chemical engineering in its modern sense by the
following equation:

Chemical engineering = unit processes (chemical

changes) + unit operations(physical changes)
The unit process is a very useful concept for
technical chemical change and has been
described as "the commercialization of a
chemical reaction under such conditions as to be
economically profitable.
This naturally includes the machinery needed and
the economics involved, as well as the physical
and chemical phases."
The unit operation is a physical change
connected with the industrial handling of
chemicals or allied materials; it frequently is tied
in with the unit process as when heat flows into
an endothermic chemical reaction or out of an
exothermic reaction.
The unit operation may also be distinctly
separated from the chemical change as when, by
"flow of fluid," a liquid is moved from one part of
an industrial establishment to another.
Chemical engineering, if successfully practiced,
requires that the respective unit processes and
operations be applied to the various
manufacturing procedures.
 Indeed, the development of chemical
manufacturing procedures is largely through flow
sheets which are definitely constructed from a
coordinated sequence of unit processes and
operations that fabricate the raw materials into
the finished product and by-products.
In the actual technical application, both unit
processes and unit operations are carried on
either simultaneously or independently in suitable
equipment under the guidance of skilled labor
supervised by chemical engineers.
This is often called a chemical process.
These unit processes and unit operations are the
common bond between otherwise widely
divergent chemical manufacturing procedures.
They, of course, are applied differently under the,
necessarily varying conditions.
Although we hope that we shall have formulas
that will enable the chemical engineer to calculate
at his desk what is going to happen in the factory,
this millennium has not arrived.
The characteristics of unit processes as applied to
the manufacture of chemicals may be summarized
as follows:
1. Each unit process points out the unitary or like
aspects in a group of numerous individual
reactions. This unitary aspect, apart from the
basic chemical family, may be a similarity in
energy change or corrosion or pressure or
reaction time or equilibrium or raw materials.

2.
2. Frequently there is a factory segregation by unit
processes wherein a building or section of a
building may be devoted to the making of many
chemicals under a given unit process as
diazotization and coupling or nitration or
hydrogenation or esterification or fermentation or
alkylation.
3. There frequently is a close relationship in the
equipment used for making many examples
under a unit process.
For instance, the cast-iron well-agitated reactor,
provided with cooling coils, called a nitrator, is
used for conducting the nitration unit process in
the manufacture of a number of chemicals such
as nitro-benzene, nitro-naphthalene, or T.N.T.
Equipment may be conveniently transferred from
the making of one chemical to that of another
within the same unit process. It is the aim of a
chemical superintendent to keep all his
equipment constantly in use.
To do this he frequently must make first one
chemical then another in the same general
reactor-a sulfonator, for example.
This multipleuse of equipment is most easily
realized under the unit process arrangement.
5. The unit process classification enables a chemical
engineer to think from group performance to that of a
new individual chemical in the like class.
He needs chiefly to remember principles rather than
specific performances.
This method of approach greatly facilitates the making
of any chemical by having available past knowledge
regarding the generalized data of this unit process.
This procedure saves much memorizing of individual
observations.
6. As the basis of unit process classification is a
chemical one, this places stress upon the
chemical reaction. Here, usually a slight increase
in the chemical yield will materially affect the profit
of the manufacturing sequence.
Hence the unit process conception lays emphasis
upon the necessity for an exhaustive study of the
basic chemical change.
The cost of raw materials looms up in the cost
distribution, being from 50 to 80 per cent of the
manufacturing expense.
Following the obtaining of the highest possible
chemical yield or, if time is available, simultaneously
with this study, should go the careful investigation of
every unit operation involved, with the aim of saving
power or heat or any other physical factor.
7. The inorganic and the organic procedures need
not be set apart industrially.
As the equipment and the manufacturing problems
are frequently so similar in both organic and
inorganic chemicals, it is industrially important
to group them together. "The principles involved
in the physical chemistry of the basic reactions
or the construction and control of the equipment
or the economics involved are the same
whether organic or inorganic products an,
obtained."
8. The design of equipment is greatly aided by the
generalizations arising from the unit process
arrangement rather than by considering each
reaction separately. What experience has
indicated for a number of reactions allied under a
unit process is an excellent guide for a new
reaction in this same grouping.
In handling unit processes, the more that is
understood about the underlying physical
chemistry of the equilibriums and the reaction
rates, the better will be the control, the higher the
conversion, and the lower the costs. It is very
important to know how fast a reaction will go and
how far.
TABLE 1. Examples of PRINCIPAL UNIT
PROCESSES
1. Combustion
2. Oxidation
3 Neutralization
4. Silicate formation
5. Causticization
6. Electrolysis
7. Double decomposition
8. Calcination, dehydration
TABLE 1. cont
9. Nitration
10. Esterification (sulfation)
11. Reduction
12. Ammonolysis
13. Halogenation
14. Sulfonation
15. Hydrolysis, hydration
TABLE 2. Examples of PRINCIPAL
UNIT OPERATIONS
1. Fluid dynamics
2. Heat transfer VS. cooling
3. Evaporation vs. evaporative cooling
4. Humidification
5. Gas absorption
6. Solvent extraction
7. Adsorption
8. Distillation and sublimation
9. Drying, high-vacuum distillation
10. Mixing