Core textbook teaching mass transfer fundamentals and applications for the design of separation processes in chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering

Principles and Applications of Mass Transfer teaches the subject of mass transfer fundamentals and their applications to the design of separation processes with enough depth of coverage to guarantee that students using the book will, at the end of the course, be able to specify preliminary designs of the most common separation process equipment.

Reflecting the growth of biochemical applications in the field of chemical engineering, the fourth edition expands biochemical coverage, including transient diffusion, environmental applications, electrophoresis, and bioseparations. Also new to the fourth edition is the integration of Python programs, which complement the Mathcad programs of the previous edition.

On the accompanying instructor’s website, the online appendices contain a downloadable library of Python and Mathcad programs for the example problems in each chapter. A complete solution manual for all end-of-chapter problems, both in Mathcad and Python, is also provided.

Some of the topics covered in Principles and Applications of Mass Transfer include:

• Molecular mass transfer, covering concentrations, velocities and fluxes, the Maxwell-Stefan relations, and Fick’s first law for binary mixtures
• The diffusion coefficient, covering diffusion coefficients for binary ideal gas systems, dilute liquids, and concentrated liquids
• Convective mass transfer, covering mass-transfer coefficients, dimensional analysis, boundary layer theory, and mass- and heat-transfer analogies
• Interphase mass transfer, covering diffusion between phases, material balances, and equilibrium-stage operations
• Gas dispersed gas-liquid operations, covering sparged vessels, tray towers, diameter, and gas-pressure drop, and weeping and entrainment

Principles and Applications of Mass Transfer is an essential textbook for undergraduate chemical, biochemical, mechanical, and environmental engineering students taking a core course on Separation Processes or Mass Transfer Operations, along with mechanical engineers and mechanical engineering students starting to get involved in combined heat- and mass-transfer applications.

Jaime Benítez attended the School of Engineering of the University of Puerto Rico where he received a BS in Chemical Engineering in 1970 and a MS in Nuclear Engineering in 1972. He earned his PhD in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1976. That year, he joined the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Puerto Rico where he taught continuously until 2014. He is now an adjunct lecturer at the University of Florida at Gainesville.