Mass Transport

Mass transport which is also referred to as mass transfer is the net movement of mass from one location to the other through factors such as steam, phase, fraction and component. Mass transport takes place in several processes like absorption, evaporation, adsorption and drying. Further, this happens when an atom or an element of combination passes to another place due to a variance in concentration. Mass transport is employed by many scientific experts and disciplines for the usage of various processes and mechanisms. The term is well known in engineering for physical processes that comprise molecular and convective transport of atoms and molecules inside physical systems.

Evaporation of water and chemical elements

Several examples of mass transport processes are the evaporation of water from a pool to the atmosphere; the diffusion of chemical contaminations in lakes, rivers and oceans from natural or artificial point sources. In industrial processes, mass transport functions comprise of chemical elements in distillation columns, adsorption and absorption like in carbon filtration and in cooling towers where hot water flows down over the fill material as air flows up in contact with water, evaporating some of the water.

Sensible heat transfer

Mass transport functions naturally comprise heat transfer and in the event of cooling tower, most of the heat is eliminated by the air supplying the latent heat removed by evaporation of the water and sensible heat from the water is also transferred to the air. In astrophysics mass transport will mean the process through matter gravitationally bound to a body, generally a star fills its Roche lobe and becomes gravitationally bound to second body commonly a compact object and is gradually accreted onto it. It has been a usual phenomenon in binary systems and may play an essential role in some kinds of supernova and pulsars.

Applications to chemical engineering problems

Mass transport is used extensively in the field of chemical engineering to solve problems. This takes place when a portion of a blend migrates within the same phase or from phase to phase due to a variance in concentration between two points. The driving force for mass transfers is always a difference in concentration. Mass will transfer from an area of high concentration to a region of low concentration. For isolation processes, thermodynamics decides the degree of separation when mass transport chooses the rate at which the separation takes place. The level of mass transport rate can be computed through the calculation and application of mass transfer coefficients. 

Questions:

• Define mass transport.
• State the role of mass transport in astrophysics.