SPP3701

CLASS • Dr R Sigwadi
• Department of Chemical Engineering
01-March 2022
 1. A 100 mol/h feed mixture with 10% pentane, 10% hexane, 30%
heptane and 50% octane is to be distilled in a single column to give an
overall distillate product that contains no more than 6 mol/h of heptane
and a bottoms product that contains a maximum of 3 mol/h of hexane.
Calculate the distillate and bottoms mole fractions, XDi and XBi, for all
other components

Feed, Distillate, Bottoms,

Component (kmol/h) XF (kmol/h) XD (kmol/h) XB
Pentane (A) 10 0.1 10 0.435 0 0.000

Hexane (B) 10 0.1 7 0.304 3 0.039

Heptane (C) 30 0.3 6 0.261 24 0.312

Octane (D) 50 0.5 0 0.000 50 0.649

Total 100 1.00 23 1.00 77 1.00

 Calculate molar fraction of feed

Note that Pentane is lighter than the light key, so all pentane will go to the distillate
Therefore, molar flowrate of A = 10kmol/h
We can determine the molar flowrate of B in the distillate, given bottoms of 3 kmol/h:

Then distillate =
 We can also determine the molar flowrate of C in the bottoms, given distillate of 6 kmol/h:
Then bottoms =

Octane is heavier than the heavy key, thus all octane products will report to the bottoms stream.
Therefore, molar flowrate of D = 0 kmol/h
Calculate XD
Calculate XB
About 100 kmol/h of a feed
mixture of 10 mol% ethane,
25 mol% n-butane, 30 mol%
n-heptane and 35 mol% n-
octane, respectively, enters a
flash drum at 700 kPa and
90oC. If it is assumed that
equilibrium is reached in the
drum. The K-values are
found in Figure 1.
 Ethane -9

The
component n-Butane -1.6

and K-
values n-Heptane - 0.15

n-Octane - 0.07
2. A feed mixture of thermal condition q = 1,
consists of pentane (20 mol%), hexane (40 mol%),
heptane (30 mol%) and octane (10 mol%),
respectively. The distillate contains 96 mol% hexane
and 92 mol% heptane. The K-values are shown in
Table 1.

• Table 1: The K-values

1. Determine the light key and heavy key.
2. Calculate the relative volatility (α) of each component with respect to the
heavy key component.
 •Solutions

1. Hexane is light key, heptane is heavy key

2. Relative volatility

= 6.9/ 1.49 = 4.63

= 3.2/ 1.49 = 2.15

= 1.49/ 1.49 = 1
= 0.71/ 1.49 = 0.48
Thank You