Assignment 1
Rules to Balance by
In this assignment, you will be given a quick
overview of the rules of materials flow balances in a lecture
style of questions and answers. Once you grasp these rules and
they seem to be common sense to you, you will have completed this
assignment.
So, what are the rules of materials flow balances?
The five rules to materials balances that I have devised follow:
- Elements and widgets can neither be created nor destroyed
- What goes in must come out (ultimately)
- Environmental releases occur because 100% efficiency is
impossible
- Industries are dynamic so bulk purchases of raw materials
and stockpiling of products and byproducts will occur
- Compounds will compound the materials flow balance
process, because of reduction of compounds to their
elemental forms or the formation of compounds from
elements.
Relative to the Wonderful World of Widgets, these rules can be
translated as follows:
- Widgets cannot be created or destroyed. They must go
somewhere, even in pieces.
- Widgets that come in, must ultimately go out. the
unplated widgets come from the manufacturer and go back
to the manufacturer, with broken widgets or widgets which
evaluated for QA/QC or widgets which fail QA/QC going to
a scrap metal recycler.
- The amount of widgets that are received from the
manufacturer will not equal the number of widgets that go
back to the manufacturer because of breakage, and QA/QC
evaluations, and other such xxx which result in
environmental releases.
- Bulk purchases and stockpiling of products do occur, but
at the Wonderful World of Widgets, the raw unplated
widgets received by the manufacturer go back to the
manufacturer so bulk purchases and stockpiling will not
affect the materials flow balance.
- Widgets are not compounds. Widgets are tangible articles
which cannot be reduced or formed, and thus the materials
flow balance will not be affected by this rule.
Once these rules seem sensible to you, you will have completed
this assignment.
Go on to Assignment 2
Go back to Course Beginning