CEN 314 Separation Processes

2021-22 Spring
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Suna ERTUNÇ

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 Short Notes:

 Responsibilities due to pandemic

 Face-to-face education
 Mass Transfer course ?
 Daily separation operations ?

 COURSE CONTENT
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 1. Introduction to Separation Processes
 Separation of mixtures constitues a major class of operations in the chemical process
industry and allied industries.
 Some mixtures are amenable to separation by purely mechanical techniques. Typical
examples comprise separation of suspended solids from a liquid by filtration, settling
or centrifugation; separation of a mixture of solid particles of different
sizes/densities by elutriation; sepration of small particles from a gas by a cyclone or a
bag filter; or separation of two immisible liquids by phase separation followed by
decantation (lab scale example is separation funnel).
 But there are many other mixtures, like gas and liquid mixtures (or solutions) in
general, which cannot be separted by any of the above techniques. The strategy of
separation of such a mixture is based on the use of either an externally supply agent.
 This separation processes of this kind are based on the principles of mass transfer
and have traditionally been called mass transfer operations.
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 The principles of mass transfer, both diffusional and convective, form the basis of most of the separation
processes used in the chemical industries.
 Here we define a separation process as a technique that transforms a mixture of substances into two or
more products differing in composition.
 In this course we shall deal with concentration-driven separation processes only and not with the
mechanical separation processes.

 Separations including enrichment, concentration, purification, refining, and isolation, are

important to Chemists and Chemical Engineers.

Chemists Chemical Engineers

• use analytical separation methods, such as • more concerned with the manufacture of chemicals using
chromatography, to determine compositions of complex economical, large-scale separation methods, which may
mixtures quantitatively differ considerably from laboratory techniques
• also use small-scale preparative separation techniques,
often similar to analytical separation methods, to recover
and purify chemicals

 For example, in a laboratory, chemists separate and analyze light-hydrocarbon mixtures by

gas-liquid chromatography, while in a large manufacturing plant a chemical engineer uses
distillation columns which are the height of tens of meters to separate the same hydrocarbon
mixtures.
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 A separation process needs some kind of a separating agent to split a mixture into more than two streams of different
compositions.
 For example, a gas mixture gets separated when it is contact with a solvent that selectively or preferentially absorb one
or more components. Here the solvent is the separating agent. The separating agent is left out after a job is completed.
 Thermal energy is the separating agent in distillation. It is supplied for vaporization of a liquid mixture and is removed
from the top vapour when it is condensed.
 In the liquid-liquid extraction, the externally added solvent is the separating agent. It is removed from the extract to
recover the product.
 A hot gas is the common separating agent in drying and an adsorbent is the agent for separation by adsorption.
 Table 1 gives a list of the separating agents for the common separation processes.

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  The reactor effluent is neccessarily a mixture of
chemical compounds: the desired product, side
products, unconverted reactants, and possibly
reaction catalyst. Typically, the desired product
must be separated from this mix in relatively pure
form, and the unconverted reactants and any
catalyst should be recovered for recycle. All the
reactants may have to be prepurified.
 Often separation itself can be the main function or
entire process. Such is the case for sugar refining,
recovery of metals from various mineral resources
etc.

 Some kind of separation process is necessary in every stage from purification of raw materials to
product separation and treatment of effluent streams.
 This is schematically shown in Fig.1.
 The core separation processes in the chemical industry are; Gas absorption and stripping,
Distillation, Liquid-liquid extraction, Solid-liquid extraction, Drying of wet solids, Adsorption and
Crystallization.
 All these separation processes involve mass transfer from one phase to another. Such two-phase
systems may be categorized as gas (or vapour)-liquid, liquid-liquid, gas-solid, and liquid-solid.
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1. Introduction to Separation Processes
 The separation of chemical mixtures into their constituents has been practiced, as an
art, for milenia.
 Early civilizations developed various techniques in order to
(1) extract metals from ores, perfumes from flowers, dyes from plants, and potash
from the ashes of burnt plants,
(2) evaporate sea water to obtain salt,
(3) refine rock asphalt, and
(4) distill liquors

• We have a very important separation unit in our body for healthy life.

• The human body could not function for long if it had no kidney, a
membrane that selectively removes water and waste products of
matabolism from blood. What is the separation
principle for kidney ???
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 This course includes the principles of large-scale component separation operations, with emphasis on methods
applied by chemical engineers to produce useful chemical products economically.
 Distillation
 Liquid-liquid extraction CEN314
 Leaching (solid-liquid extraction)
 Drying
 Absorption
 Crystallization
 Newer methods: are also important but we do not examine in CEN314
 Super-critical extraction
 Adsorption
 Membrane separation.

 Using the principles of separation operations, chemical engineers can successfully develop, design, and
operate industrial processes
 Furthermore in recent years increasingly, chemical engineers are being called upoun to deal with industrial
separation problems on a smaller scale, e.g. manufacture of speciality chemicals by batch processing,
recovery of biologial solutes, crystal growth of semiconductors, recovery of valuable chemicals from
wastes.
 In addition investigation on the membrane materials that it is used for the efficient separation give an
attraction in the field of chemical engineering.

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 During the last few decades spectacular developments have taken place in several new areas such as materials,
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and alternative fuels.
 These developments accompanied by challenging separation problems often beyond the scope of the
traditional mass transfer operations .
 Improving selectivity of separation by using better separating agents (for example, better solvents),
concentration of high-value products from dilute solutions, improving efficiency and reducing equipment size,
reducing energy requirements are a few of these challenges.
 In addition, growing concern for environment and rising energy costs are the two major factors having
significant influence on reshaping separation processes.
 On a broader perspective, the two important present-day criteria of evaluation of a process, new or
conventional, are whether it is «sustainable» and «green».
 Alongside development and adoption of green technologies has come up the idea of «green separation
processes».
 So far as the chemical process industries are concerned, green technologies and green separation processes are
complementary.
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 Why does chemical engineer require the study of separation techniques?
Because separations are crucial in chemical engineering.

Raw materials are prepurified in separation devices and fed to the chemical reactor; unreacted feed is
separated from the reaction products and recycled back to the reactor. Products must be further
separated and purified before they can be sold.
Some chemical plants such as sugar factories and vegatable oil production from peanuts, soybeans,
sunflower seeds, cotton seeds consist of only separation units.
Chemical plants commonly have from 40% to 70% of both capital and operating costs in separations.
So chemical engineers try to improve the reaction conversion and yield in order to decrease the total
cost of the process (What does it do ?).
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 1. Introduction to Separation Processes- cont.
 Petroleum (or oil) refineries are also most common plants Light products
including separation processes mainly distillation columns.

 They include ;
• distillation to separate crude oil into various boiling-
point fractions or cuts,
• alkylation to combine small hydrocarbon molecules
into larger molecules,
• catalytic reforming to change the structure of medium-
size hydrocarbon molecules,
• fluid catalytic cracking to break apart large
hydrocarbon molecules,
• hydrocracking to break apart even larger molecules,
• and other processes to convert the crude-oil residue to
coke and lighter fractions.
Heavy products
bbl: Blue Barrels of Oil 11
Class HW for next lesson

Each of students will examine the examples of few

separation processes industrially important and explain with
5-10 sentences.

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