Mass balance batch reactor

To solve the batch-reactor mass-balance equation, we write... 

The chemical engineer almost never has kinetics for the process she or he is working on. The problem of solving the batch or continuous reactor mass-balance equations with known kinetics is much simpler than the problems encountered in practice. We seldom know reaction rates in useful situations, and even if these data were available, they frequently would not be particularly useful. 

Note also that these equations can be simplified to obtain the batch reactor mass- and energy-balance equations by setting Dj = 0 and w = 0 to give... 

Although the system could have been operated in a continuous mode, it was decided to operate it in a batch mode. In the batch high-recycle mode the reactor mass balance is that for a stlrred-tank batch reactor and thus over a period of time is analogous to the mass balance for a plug flow reactor over a distance along... 

From the mass balance equation for a batch reactor... 

Equations (1.1) to (1.3) are diflerent ways of expressing the overall mass balance for a flow system with variable inventory. In steady-state flow, the derivatives vanish, the total mass in the system is constant, and the overall mass balance simply states that input equals output. In batch systems, the flow terms are zero, the time derivative is zero, and the total mass in the system remains constant. We will return to the general form of Equation (1.3) when unsteady reactors are treated in Chapter 14. Until then, the overall mass balance merely serves as a consistency check on more detailed component balances that apply to individual substances. 

A batch reactor has no input or output of mass after the initial charging. The amounts of individual components may change due to reaction but not due to flow into or out of the system. The component balance for component A, Equation (1.6), reduces to... 

The most important characteristic of an ideal batch reactor is that the contents are perfectly mixed. Corresponding to this assumption, the component balances are ordinary differential equations. The reactor operates at constant mass between filling and discharge steps that are assumed to be fast compared with reaction half-lives and the batch reaction times. Chapter 1 made the further assumption of constant mass density, so that the working volume of the reactor was constant, but Chapter 2 relaxes this assumption. 

In the above reactions, I signifies an initiator molecule, Rq the chain-initiating species, M a monomer molecule, R, a radical of chain length n, Pn a polymer molecule of chain length n, and f the initiator efficiency. The usual approximations for long chains and radical quasi-steady state (rate of initiation equals rate of termination) (2-6) are applied. Also applied is the assumption that the initiation step is much faster than initiator decomposition. ,1) With these assumptions, the monomer mass balance for a batch reactor is given by the following differential equation. 

By simplifying the general component balance of Sec. 1.2.4, the mass balance for a batch reactor becomes... 

It becomes necessary to incorporate a total mass balance equation into the reactor model, whenever the total quantity of material in the reactor varies, as in the cases of semi-continuous or semi-batch operation or where volume changes occur, owing to density changes in flow systems. Otherwise the total mass balance equation can generally be neglected. 

It is assumed that all the tank-type reactors, covered in this and the immediately following sections, are at all times perfectly mixed, such that concentration and temperature conditions are uniform throughout the tanks contents. Fig. 3.10 shows a batch reactor with a cooling jacket. Since there are no flows into the reactor or from the reactor, the total mass balance tells us that the total mass remains constant. 

The component mass balance, when coupled with the heat balance equation and temperature dependence of the kinetic rate coefficient, via the Arrhenius relation, provide the dynamic model for the system. Batch reactor simulation examples are provided by BATCHD, COMPREAC, BATCOM, CASTOR, HYDROL and RELUY. 

For a batch reactor, under constant volume conditions, the component mass balance equation can be represented by... 

The reactor system, where the kinetic experiments were carried out can be described as a semi-batch reactor. Only the synthesis gas (H2 and CO) was fed into the reactor continuously during the experiments, while 1-butene and the solvent were in the batch mode. All reactions took place in the liquid phase. The mass balance for an arbitrary component in the gas is given by... 

In the fed-batch (semicontinuous) operation mode, substrates are fed into the reactor but no material is removed from the reactor. Therefore, the total volume of the material within the reactor increases as a function of time. For this reactor type the mass balance for each component of the reaction mixture is given by... 

The analytical model developed for network C assumes that the reactions take place in a fed-batch reactor and is a variation of the model developed for network B (see Section 4.2.2.2). Equations (57) to (59), written for networkB, are valid here as well. In addition, the mass balances of the cofactors A and B are given by... 

The temperature and composition of the contents of an ideal batch reactor are uniform at any instant, but the concentration changes with time. Since the composition is uniform, the mass balance may be performed over the whole reactor. 

We need reaction-rate expressions to insert into species mass-balance equations for a particular reactor. These are the equations from which we can obtain compositions and other quantities that we need to describe a chemical process. In introductory chemistry courses students are introduced to first-order irreversible reactions in the batch reactor, and the impression is sometimes left that this is the only mass balance that is important in chemical reactions. In practical situations the mass balance becomes more comphcated. 

The mass-balance equation on species A in a constant-density batch reactor is... 

If the volume C of a batch reactor depends on conversion or time, then the derivations of all of the previous equations are incorrect. We could find V(Ca) and integrate the mass-balance equation as before, but it is usually more convenient to use a different variable such as the fractional conversion X. We finally write Ca= Na / V and then substitute for Na (X) and V(X) to find Ca(X). 

In a constant-pressure batch reactor the mass balance on A becomes... 

Figure 2-9 Sketch showing correspondence between time in a batch reactor and position a in a plug-flow tubular reactor. The mass-balance equations describe both reactors for the constant-density situations.

We can therefore replace dt by dz/u in all of the preceding differential equations for the mass balance in the batch reactor and use these equations to describe reactions during flow through a pipe. This reactor is called the plug-flow tubular reactor, which is the most important continuous reactor encountered in the chemical industry. 

Note that this problem is even easier than for a batch reactor because for the CSTR we just have to solve an algebraic equation rather than a differential equation For second-order kinetics, r = kC, the CSTR mass-balance equation becomes... 

In this chapter we consider the performance of isothermal batch and continuous reactors with multiple reactions. Recall that for a single reaction the single differential equation describing the mass balance for batch or PETR was always separable and the algebraic equation for the CSTR was a simple polynomial. In contrast to single-reaction systems, the mathematics of solving for performance rapidly becomes so complex that analytical solutions are not possible. We will first consider simple multiple-reaction systems where analytical solutions are possible. Then we will discuss more complex systems where we can only obtain numerical solutions. 

For a PFTR, the substitution dt —> dz/u transforms the batch reactor equation into the PFTR mass-balance equation. 

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