Effect of the individual mass transport resistances on the overall mass fluxes in multicomponent systems

The method to assess the relative importance of the individual mass transpo rt resistances has been developed for multicomponent systems where each of the constituent resistance is defined by an appropriate matrix of mass tran sfer coefficients. This method is validated using multicomponent membrane e xtraction as a test case. The process is both energy-efficient and easy to operate. The process was studied experimentally as a test case. The effect of all the individual mass transport mechanisms on the overall mass fluxes is studied. If resistances to mass transfer, identified by the method as insignificant, are omitted from the simulations, the agreement between numerical predicti ons and the experiment is not impaired. It is also demonstrated that the ac curacy of calculating mass fluxes in membrane extractors became worse when the variation of diffusivities with concentration along the diffusion path is neglected, and also, when the effect of the membrane on interrelationshi ps between the mass fluxes (referred to the stationary system of co-ordinat es) is not taken into account.