1. A measure of the difficulty of the separation of two components in a liquid–liquid separation. In an equimolar counter diffusion process in which the mole fraction of the more volatile component in a mixture increases from y1 to y2, the NTU is determined from the integral:
where yi is the mole fraction of the more volatile component at the interface. The number of transfer units is also used in the cooling tower calculations in which the calculation is based on the differential of the enthalpy of the water.
2. A parameter used to quantify the performance of a heat exchanger expressed as the ratio of the product of heat transfer area, A, and heat transfer coefficient, U, to the minimum heat capacity rate, mcp: