Evaporation of p-xylene

by Broderick Williams

Submitted : Fall 2009

A chemical known as para-xylene has been expelled into a small stream at an initial concentration of 10 parts-per-million (PPM). Knowing that p-xylene is a volatile chemical that evaporates at a constant rate, I will calculate 3 key inquiries issued by my advisors. Because the stream's dimensions of depth vary, it is broken into 4 separate sections. Once calculations were performed using integration, it was found that p-xylene dilutes to a concentration < 2.0 ppm at the end of section 3, reaching a total distance of 9,520 Ft. Using Distance over velocity, the time (in hours) was calculated for sections (1) through (3) and added together to find the total time needed to reach 2.0 ppm, which was found to equal 8.49 hours. Finally, integration is used to find the concentration of p-xylene in Section 4, resulting in the final concentration of 0.8 ppm.

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