CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 120B

Homework 4 – due Friday, February 18, 2011

1. A drop of water at 25 C is thrown onto a hot copper frying pan. How hot must the frying pan be in order for
the drop to ‘sizzle’ (boil a thin layer) on contact?

2. Consider a plate of thickness d and

thermal diffusivity α. One edge (z = 0) is heated in an oscillatory fashion,
with T (z = 0, t) = T0 cos ωt = < eiωt . The other end is insulating (dT /dz = 0 at z = d).
a. Before doing any detailed calculations, from dimensional or scaling arguments, figure out a frequency where the
solution will change qualitatively. That is – above a certain frequency scale, the temperature in the plate will look
a certain way, whereas below that frequency scale, it looks completely different. What do you expect will happen?
Describe it physically in terms of how long it conduction takes.

b. Non-dimensionalize the differential equations, choosing z = dζ, T = T0 θ, and t = t̂/ω, where t̂, θ, and ζ are
dimensionless variables. What dimensionless parameter appears? What does it correspond to?
c. Assuming a fully-developed, periodic solution θ(ζ, t̂) = f (ζ)eit̂ , derive an ODE and boundary conditions for
f (ζ). Solve it.
d. Sketch f (ζ) for ‘low’ frequency and ‘high’ frequency (in a dimensionless sense). Feel free to use Mathematica
or Matlab to do so if you like; you can even get them to animate the solutions.

3. Estimate the thermal penetration depth in water, brick, steel and styrofoam after 1 second and after 1 hour.
Assume no convection in water.
Steel: k=61W/mK, Cp =460 J/kg-K, ρ=7870 kg/m3
Water: k=0.6 W/mK, Cp =4100 J/kg-K, ρ=1000 kg/m3
Brick: k=.45 W/mK, Cp =840 J/kg-K, ρ=1800 kg/m3
Styrofoam: k=0.033 W/mK, Cp = 1300 J/kg-K, ρ=25 kg/m3

4. Estimate the contact temperature between a human foot and three beds of 400 C rocks, one of porous lava rocks
of solid volume fraction 0.25, a second of porous lava rocks with a solid volume fraction of 0.75 and a third of solid
lava rock. Assume that the rock part of the lava rocks has a thermal conductivity, k0 = 3 W/m-K, a heat capacity of
800 J/kg-K and a density, ρ0 of 2200 kg/m3 , and the rest is air. The effective thermal conductivity of a porous rock
is
keff 3f
=1+   (1)
k0 k1 +2k0
−f
k1 −k0

in which k0 is the thermal conductivity of the continuous medium (rock), k1 is the thermal conductivity of the pores
(air), and f is the volume fraction of air. Since k1  k0 and ρ1  ρ0 , do you actually have look up the thermal
conductivity and density of air? In gathering the rocks for your fire walking ceremony, what would be about the
maximum density you should pick before burning your feet? (Skin burns around 50 C).