Chemical Engineering Principles: Material and Energy Balances

Every chemical process, from food manufacturing to water treatment, relies on a fundamental set of physical laws to ensure efficiency, safety, and scalability. Understanding how mass and energy flow through these systems is the core foundation of chemical engineering. This course provides a clear, structured path to mastering these essential calculations through written explanations and practical step-by-step examples. You will transition from a basic understanding of physical units to confidently solving complex engineering conservation problems. Through targeted exercises, you will learn how to analyze steady-state processes, handle recycle loops, and account for chemical reactions. What you'll learn: - Understand fundamental engineering units, dimensions, and dimensional consistency - Perform material balances on single-unit and multi-unit systems without chemical reactions - Apply conservation of mass principles to reactive systems, including recycle and bypass streams - Calculate energy requirements for processes using heat capacity, latent heat, and enthalpy tables - Solve simultaneous material and energy balances for steady-state chemical processes - Use modern computational practices and basic programming concepts to automate balance equations We begin with foundational definitions, physical properties, and unit conversion techniques. From there, you will progress to systematic process analysis, learning how to draw process flow charts and write independent material balance equations before incorporating energy calculations and thermal effects. This course is designed for beginners, engineering students, and professionals looking to build a strong, reliable foundation in process analysis. No prior engineering experience is required to begin. Start building your engineering core skills today.