Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer

Chapter 14

Mass Transfer

14.1 Introduction

Mass transfer is an important topic with vast industrial applications in varied fields such as: mechanical, chemical and aerospace engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Few of the applications involving mass transfer are:

1. absorption and desorption (e.g. ammonia refrigeration systems)
2. solvent extraction
3. humidification (e.g. cooling towers and air-conditioning applications)
4. oxygenation of blood, food, etc.
5. evaporation of petrol in internal combustion engines
6. neutron diffusion in nuclear reactors
7. distillation columns to separate components in a mixture.

Numerous every day applications such as dissolving of sugar in tea, drying of wood or clothes, evaporation of water vapour into dry air, diffusion ...