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A generous donation of $100,000
from Ms Mollie Leonelli, widow of an alumnus, allowed Wayne State
University (WSU) in Detroit to upgrade its Unit Operations Laboratory
(now called the Leonelli UO Laboratory) in line with feedback from
students and industry. |
TA
Assignment.
Two half-time TAs were assigned to commission the new
equipment and upgrade some existing experiments. The assignment
included developing procedures for the distillation and filtration
units, upgrading the fluid bed experiments, and testing the procedures
via running experiments. The results of this TA assignment were
very effective.
Distillation Column.
Two different procedures were developed for Armfield's UOP3cc Distillation
column. The first one was for the batch distillation of ethanol-water
binary system, and the second was the demonstration of batch heterogeneous
azeotropic distillation of acetic acid and water with ethyl acetate
as the entrainer. A handheld refractometer was purchased to determine
the product compositions. The column efficiencies at different reflux
ratios for ethanol-water system were calculated by Fenske's and McCabe-Thiele's
method.
Reflux
Ratio |
Number
of
Theoretical Plates |
Efficiency (%) |
Method |
Total |
1.5 |
19.3 |
Fenske |
4 |
1.8 |
22.4 |
Fenske |
3 |
1.6 |
19.4 |
Fenske |
3 |
3 |
37.5 |
McCabe-Thiele |
Table
- The column efficiencies for EtOH-Water system.
Fixed and Fluidized Bed.
The undergraduate students always had difficulties in
the comparison of their theoretical and experimental results. The TAs discovered
that this problem is eliminated via specifying the void fractions for each experiment.
The bed void fraction for the air and water-side columns were determined based
on the agreement between the experimental and the theoretical results. The void
fraction was found to be 0.45 for the air fixed bed experiment (Ergun Equation)
and the fluidization point determined theoretically using the Carman-Kozney Equation
was exactly at the same air flow rate as the experimentally observed fluidization
point (Fig A). For the water-side column, the best agreement
between the theoretical and the experimental results was achieved when the bed
porosity was set to 0.17
for fixed bed state and 0.55 for the fluidized bed state (Fig B).
Summary.
After this WSU UO Lab upgrade we now have 13 excellent experiments for
our students. The concept of using part time TAs was very effective.
Figures:
Pressure drop as a function of air flow rate in the (A) air-side column
(B) water side column.
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Fig (A) Air-side column
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Fig (B) Water-side column
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The work and article were prepared by B. Saygili and P. Kohle directed by Professor
J. F. Louvar. |
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