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A membrane module performs air separation to obtain higher purity oxygen permeate product. For simplicity, assume that the air is made of 3 5 vol

A membrane module performs air separation to obtain higher purity oxygen
permeate product. For simplicity, assume that the air is made of 35 vol% O2 and 65 vol% N2. The air feed flow rate is 8,000 cm3(STP)/hr. For this membrane module, which is 0.0004 cm in thickness, the permeability of O2 and N2 are determined to be 65\times 10^-10[cm3(STP)cm/(cm2scmHg)] and 5\times 10^-10[cm3
(STP)cm/(cm2scmHg)], respectively. The retentate side has a uniform pressure of 10.5 bar, the permeate side has a uniform pressure of 1.1 bar. Our goal is to produce a permeate stream containing 70 vol% O2. Conversion factor that might be useful: 1 mol of ideal gas has 22.4 L at STP.
(a) Calculate the O2 selectivity of this membrane over N2 AND the N2 permeance of the membrane
(b) For the retentate stream, determine its oxygen composition (in vol%)
(c) What is the volumetric flow rate?
(d) Calculate the cut fraction.
(e) Determine the area of the membrane module.
(f) Recalculate the membrane area using the Rachford-Rice type equation, given that the retentate side pressure is doubled (i.e. Pr =21 bar).
(g) Based on the result in Part (a), qualitatively describe how and why increasing retentate side pressure affects the size of the membrane module.

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