Currently our undergraduate Unit Operations Laboratory successfully demonstrates the principles of heat transfer in tubular heat exchangers, momentum transfer in fluid flow through pipes, fittings and beds of solids, mass transfer in distillation and solvent extraction, and reaction kinetics in integral and well-mixed reactors. The deficiency is that have an experiment which is capable of demonstrating several principles at once is not available. This laboratory improvement program is intended to remove that deficiency by allowing the study of heat, mass, and momentum transfer simultaneously in a highly-instrumented agitated vessel. The vessel is to be 60 gallons in volume, and be instrumented to allow determination of heat transfer coefficients between the jacket and fluid, momentum transfer between the impeller and the fluid, and mass transfer rates of oxygen in and out of solution. The simultaneous effects of gas sparging, liquid viscosity, and liquid temperature on heat, mass and momentum transport rates will be studied.
