ChE 2301

Fundamentals of Transport Processes

Spring 2005

 Course Syllabus

 

 

Instructor Information

 

Instructor:                    William J. Federspiel, Ph.D.

Secretary:                  Nicole M. Johnson (johnsonnm2@upmc.edu, 3-9624)

Office:                         1243 BEH and 215 McGowan (3025 E. Carson St.)

Office Phone:             412-383-9499 (3-9499 internal)

Email:                         federspielwj@upmc.edu

Office Hours:              W 2-5, H 9-12 all in BEH. Other times by appointment

 

Class Times and Information

 

Lecture:                      H 4:00-7:35                1221 Benedum Hall (FMLC)

Course Website:       http://courseweb.pitt.edu

 

Course Purpose and Goals

 

Fundamentals of Transport Processes is a graduate level engineering course designed to review the governing relations of momentum, heat, and mass transfer in continua at an advanced level for students who have already been exposed to transport at the undergraduate level. Principal concepts will be illustrated through their application to classical and practical paradigms in transport phenomena. Students will learn useful analytical methods for studying and solving steady state and unsteady state (transient) transport problems with and without fluid convection. The computer analysis tool, Matlab®, will be used to help compute and visualize solutions to problems as a means for exploring the underlying physical phenomena to help illustrate principal concepts. A powerful yet easy-to-use finite element tool, Femlab®, which interfaces directly with Matlab®, will be also be used to simulate steady state and transient transport in a variety of problems, including those where analytical solutions are difficult or impossible or in which lengthy mathematical analyses might obscure the physical phenomena being addressed.

 

The study of transport phenomena follows logically that of thermodynamics. While thermodynamics looks at systems in equilibrium, transport phenomena looks at systems departing from equilibrium and seeks to quantify the flow or movement of specific system properties (e.g. thermal energy, species concentration) that arises from the disequilibrium and that “wants” to bring the system back towards equilibrium. The principal means of analyzing transport in this course will be through the application of microscopic or differential balances of species mass, thermal energy (heat), and momentum. This first part of the course will focus on thermal energy and species mass transport in the absence of fluid convection, generally referred to as conductive and diffusive transport. The second part of the course will focus on momentum transport and fluid motion (convection), and on how convection affects conductive and diffusive transport. Throughout both parts of the course, example problems are used extensively to help illustrate key transport principles using chemical engineering and bioengineering applications.

 

Specific Course Objectives

 

  1. The student will be able to derive appropriate differential balances for specific material properties, including momentum, thermal energy, and mass species, accounting appropriately for property flux by convective and diffusive (molecular-scale) processes, along with property generation or loss in the material continua.
  2. The student will be able to write the Thermal Energy Equation, the Species Continuity Equation, and the Navier-Stokes Equations and pose (simplify) them appropriately for specific transport problems.
  3. The student will know appropriate boundary conditions that can be applied to specific transport problems.
  4. The student will be able to conduct scale or dimensional analyses of transport problems, using the analyses to help simplify or enhance understanding of underlying transport processes.
  5. The student will be able to solve and physically interpret one-dimensional steady state conduction and species diffusion problems in rectangular, cylindrical, and spherical geometries, with and without zero-order and first-order generation/loss.
  6. The student will be able to use separation of variables technique to solve and physically interpret two-dimensional steady-state conduction and species diffusion problems.
  7. The student will be able use similarity methods, and the method of weighted residuals, to solve and physically interpret unsteady state conduction and diffusion problems in unbounded material regions.
  8. The student will be able to use separation of variables technique to solve and interpret unsteady state conduction and diffusion problems in bounded material regions.
  9. The student will be able to solve and physically interpret unidirectional steady and unsteady viscous flows in unbounded regions and in bounded regions (i.e. flow conduits or ducts).
  10. The student will be able to solve and physically interpret simultaneous convection and diffusion (conduction) problems involving the interaction of thermal or concentration boundary layers with developing or developed velocity profiles.
  11. The student will be able to use Matlab® as an analysis tool to compute and visualize numerical results arising from solutions to transport problems in the course.
  12. The student will be able to use a finite element tool, Femlab®, to computational simulate steady state and unsteady state heat, mass, and momentum transport in one-dimensional and two-dimensional regions, including complications associated with irregular geometry or nonlinear transport.

 

Prerequisites

 

Undergraduate course in Fluid Mechanics and Transport Phenomena.

Desire to be challenged.

 

Required and Supplemental Reading

 

Required Text:

  • Analysis of Transport Phenomena, W.M. Deen, Oxford University Press, 1998.

 

Supplemental Texts:

  • Transport Phenomena. Second Addition R.B. Bird, W.E. Stewart, E.N. Lightfoot. John Wiley and Sons, 2002
  • Transport Phenomena: A Unified Approach. R.S. Brodkey, H.C. Hershey.
  •  McGraw Hill, 1988.
  • An Introduction to Mass and Heat Transfer. S. Middleman. John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
  • Mass Transfer. A.L. Hines, R.N. Maddox. Prentice-Hall, 1985.
  • Convective Heat and Mass Transfer. W.M. Kays, M.E. Crawford. McGraw Hill, 1993.

 

Course Requirements and Grading Scheme

 

The lecture material will cover most but not all of what you will be required to learn. You will be responsible for learning all the material covered in lecture, plus some material not covered in lecture but specifically identified from the homework assignments. 

 

Your participation in this course will include the following:

 

Class Participation/Attendance is mandatory and consists of both individual and team based efforts. In the latter, students will work through team based learning activities where example problems are analyzed, solved, and explored graphically/visually using Matlab and Femlab.

 

Homework Assignments will be posted on the web on Saturday and will indicate the required sections of the text for reading and selected problems that the students can work on to test their knowledge of the material being covered. Final answers to the problems will also be posted but not the detailed solutions. Any questions students have regarding the solutions to the problems should be addressed during the office hours for the week of the assignment or that immediately following. Homework will be due in the main ChE office by Friday at 5 pm on the week assigned. Homework will be graded S/U for effort.

 

Exams will be scheduled on Saturdays and either be take-home or in-class exams (typically 3-5 hour exams). Exams will consist of previous homework problems in combination with new problems modeled after assigned homework problems. Take-home exams will be posted on the web at a scheduled time and due later that same day. Students can use the class handouts for the exams, but no other resources. Students must NOT work/consult/discuss the exam with other students.

 

Research Project will be scheduled later in the course. Students will work in teams to identify a research paper describing experiments involving some aspect of transport phenomena in chemical or biomedical engineering applications. Students will develop a transport model relative to the process described in the paper and will use Femlab® simulations to provide additional insight into the process described in the paper and the results generated in the paper.

 

Your grade will be determined based on the following distribution:

           

Class Participation/Homework Effort                     10%

Exam 1                                                                       15%

Exam 2                                                                       15%

Exam 3                                                                       15%

Exam 4                                                                       15%

Highest Exam                                                            +5%

Research Project Report                                         25%

 

Course Policies

 

Homework Problem Sets:

Problem sets will not be accepted late under any circumstances after the due date without explicit email approval from the instructor. Missed homework receives a U.

Exams:

Missed exams can be made up in cases of extreme circumstances, e.g. illness requiring medical care, death in family, or travel related to University or work activities (for part-time students). Requests for make-up exams must consist of a) a typed one-page letter explaining the reason for missing the exam, and b) relevant corroborating documentation (e.g. a doctor’s note).  If you know you will miss an exam, arrangements must be made at least one week in advance and the exam will be taken prior to the other students. If the missed exam is unanticipated, the request for a make-up exam must be in my hands (not my mailbox) within a three-day period after the scheduled exam day.

Behavioral Issues:

Late arrivals can be disruptive so please make every attempt to arrive on-time. Consistent offenders will be asked to will be asked to leave the class.

Tentative Course Schedule and Outline

 

Jan. 6

General property balances. Convective and diffusive flux. Conservation equation for thermal energy. Fourier’s Law. Introduction to Femlab

Jan. 13

Steady-state unidirectional conduction. Introduction to Femlab

Jan. 20

Conservation equation for chemical species. Fick’s Law. Mass transfer boundary conditions. Steady-state unidirectional diffusion

Jan. 27

Steady-state unidirectional diffusion

 

Exam 1

Feb. 3

Transient and diffusion and conduction

Feb. 10

Transient and diffusion and conduction

Feb. 17

Multidimensional diffusion and conduction

Feb. 24

Conservation equation for momentum. Momentum diffusion and viscous stress. Navier-Stokes equations. Steady-state duct flows.

 

Exam 2

Mar. 3

Low Reynolds hydrodynamics

Mar. 10

Spring Break

Mar. 17

Potential and boundary layer flows

 

Exam 3

Mar. 24

Transient flow processes

Mar. 31

Convective heat and mass transfer

Apr. 7

Convective heat and mass transfer

 

Exam 4

Apr. 14

Research project presentations

Apr. 21

Research project presentations

 

Other Important Dates:

 

January 18 (Friday): Last day to drop class without tuition charge.

March 16 (Wednesday): Last day to withdraw from class with R grade.

April 24 (Saturday): Spring Term ends.