Applications to Non-ideal Reactors

A case study, referred to the phenol-formaldehyde reaction model developed in the previous chapters, closes the chapter. 

This last chapter sketches the extension of the methods developed in the previous chapters to real chemical batch reactors, characterized by nonideal fluid dynamics and by the presence of multiphase systems. 

different typologies of nonideal batch reactors are considered. In particular gas-liquid reactors are discussed, which may be used for different industrial applications (e.g., reactions of oxidation) and are often encountered in the case of gassy reactions (i.e., liquid-phase reactions which do not produce significant thermal effects but in which the production of gaseous products may lead to explosions). 

The effects deriving from both nonideal mixing and the presence of multiphase systems are considered, in order to develop an adequate mathematical modeling. Computational fluid dynamics models and zone models are briefly discussed and compared to simpler approaches, based on physical models made out of a few ideal reactors conveniently connected. 

The nonideal behavior also depends on reactor dimensions thus scale-up methods are sketched, in order to face the problems deriving from the industrial scale of those reactors. 

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