Transport Phenomena I

Course Description

Transport Phenomena I is the analysis chemical engineers own: how momentum, heat and mass move, and how to size the equipment that moves them. The statewide description is unusually concrete — integral balance equations for conservation of momentum, energy and mass; application to chemical processes involving fluid flow and heat and mass transfer; estimation of friction factors and heat and mass transfer coefficients; pump selection and sizing; piping network analysis; design of heat exchangers.

⚠ Note what that list contains: pumps, pipes and heat exchangers. This is the first course in the degree whose output is a piece of equipment with a size, and that makes it the most directly employable course in the first half of the major. The second term, ECH4267, is where it becomes differential and abstract; this one stays close to things you can point at.

Carried by three Florida public institutions.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Apply integral (macroscopic) balances of momentum, energy and mass to flow systems.
• Analyse pipe flow: friction factors, the Moody chart, minor losses and the mechanical energy balance.
• Select and size a pump, and check it against NPSH.
• Analyse piping networks and flow measurement devices.
• Compute heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation, and use correlations for convective coefficients.
• Design and rate a heat exchanger using LMTD and effectiveness-NTU methods.
• Estimate mass transfer coefficients and apply the analogies between momentum, heat and mass transfer.

Optional Outcomes

• Introduction to boundary-layer theory.
• Non-Newtonian fluids and slurry flow.
• Introduction to computational fluid dynamics.
• Compressible flow in pipes.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Fluid statics and the integral balances.
• Laminar and turbulent pipe flow; friction factors.
• The mechanical energy balance; pumps, NPSH and pump curves.
• Piping networks, valves, fittings and flow measurement.
• Conduction, convection and radiation.
• Convective heat transfer correlations.
• Heat exchanger design and rating.
• Introduction to mass transfer and the transport analogies.

Optional Topics

• Boundary layers.
• Non-Newtonian flow.
• Flow past immersed bodies; packed beds.
• Introduction to CFD.

Resources & Tools

• Welty, Rorrer & Foster, Fundamentals of Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer; Geankoplis, Transport Processes and Separation Process Principles; and Bird, Stewart & Lightfoot, which is the reference every chemical engineer eventually owns.
• The Moody chart and standard correlation tables; MATLAB, Python or a spreadsheet for iterative friction-factor and exchanger calculations.
• Manufacturer pump curves — real ones, which are freely available and make the sizing exercises concrete.

Career Pathways

Named on the Chemical Engineer career path. Fluid flow and heat transfer are what a plant process engineer works on daily, and the pump and exchanger skills are immediately usable in an internship. In Florida the same analysis carries into water and wastewater treatment, power generation, food and beverage processing, and the phosphate industry.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ UF numbers the transport and separations sequence differently from everyone else

Florida runs two parallel numbering families through the analytical core of this degree, and the University of Florida is alone on one side of it:

⚠ Same material, two schemes, and no number in common. Nothing in the identifier signals it, so an evaluator matching on course numbers finds nothing to match. On transfer between Florida chemical engineering programmes, send a topic list and a syllabus rather than a course number.

⚠⚠ Only four Florida institutions teach this, and two of them are one college

Chemical engineering is awarded by four Florida public institutions in three cities: the University of Florida (110 bachelor’s degrees a year), the University of South Florida (73), Florida State (27) and Florida A&M (4). Florida State and Florida A&M share the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, a single joint college in Tallahassee, which is why their records for this prefix are identical down to the title.

⚠⚠ So a carrier count in this prefix overstates how many independent programmes exist. A course carried by “FAMU and FSU” is one programme’s course, not two institutions agreeing. Read the hedging on this page accordingly, and treat anything stated about content as a description of a small number of specific curricula rather than a Florida-wide norm.

⚠ Neither UCF nor FIU awards a chemical engineering degree — the two largest universities in the state by enrolment. See the Chemical Engineer career path for what that means if you live in Orlando or Miami.

Accreditation and licensure

All four Florida programmes are accredited by ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission, which is what employers screen on and what carries the four-year route to Professional Engineer licensure under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes. ⚠ Accreditation attaches to a named programme at a named institution, not to a course list — verify the specific programme in ABET’s own search.

Most chemical engineers never license: process plants fall under the industrial exemption. ⚠ The Florida exceptions are environmental and water engineering consulting, where work is sealed for public clients. Sit the FE examination in your final year regardless — the chemical FE is written for the curriculum you have just finished and will never be easier.