Characteristic scales heat transfer

Fixing the rate of heat transfer in a batch reactor is often not the best way to control the reaction. The heating or cooling characteristics can be varied with time to suit the characteristics of the reaction. Because of the complexity of hatch operation and the fact that operation is usually small scale, it is rare for any attempt to be made... 

Topics that acquire special importance on the industrial scale are the quality of mixing in tanks and the residence time distribution in vessels where plug flow may be the goal. The information about agitation in tanks described for gas/liquid and slurry reactions is largely apphcable here. The relation between heat transfer and agitation also is discussed elsewhere in this Handbook. Residence time distribution is covered at length under Reactor Efficiency. A special case is that of laminar and related flow distributions characteristic of non-Newtonian fluids, which often occiu s in polymerization reactors. 

So far, consideration has been limited to chemistry physical constraints such as heat transfer may also dictate the way in which reactions are performed. Oxidation reactions are highly exothermic and effectively there are only two types of reactor in which selective oxidation can be achieved on a practical scale multitubular fixed bed reactors with fused salt cooling on the outside of the tubes and fluid bed reactors. Each has its own characteristics and constraints. Multitubular reactors have an effective upper size limit and if a plant is required which is too large to allow the use of a single reactor, two reactors must be used in parallel. 

In our analysis, we discuss experimental results of heat transfer obtained by previous investigators and related to incompressible fluid flow in micro-channels of different geometry. The basic characteristics of experimental conditions are given in Table 4.1. The studies considered herein were selected to reveal the physical basis of scale effect on convective heat transfer and are confined mainly to consideration of laminar flows that are important for comparison with conventional theory. 

The second approach assigns thermal resistance to a gaseous boundary layer at the heat transfer surface. The enhancement of heat transfer found in fluidized beds is then attributed to the scouring action of solid particles on the gas film, decreasing the effective film thickness. The early works of Leva et al. (1949), Dow and Jacob (1951), and Levenspiel and Walton (1954) utilized this approach. Models following this approach generally attempt to correlate a heat transfer Nusselt number in terms of the fluid Prandtl number and a modified Reynolds number with either the particle diameter or the tube diameter as the characteristic length scale. Examples are ... 

Three different principles govern the design of bench-scale calorimetric units heat flow, heat balance, and power consumption. The RC1 [184], for example, is based on the heat-flow principle, by measuring the temperature difference between the reaction mixture and the heat transfer fluid in the reactor jacket. In order to determine the heat release rate, the heat transfer coefficient and area must be known. The Contalab [185], as originally marketed by Contraves, is based on the heat balance principle, by measuring the difference between the temperature of the heat transfer fluid at the jacket inlet and the outlet. Knowledge of the characteristics of the heat transfer fluid, such as mass flow rates and the specific heat, is required. ThermoMetric instruments, such as the CPA [188], are designed on the power compensation principle (i.e., the supply or removal of heat to or from the reactor vessel to maintain reactor contents at a prescribed temperature is measured). 

The RC1 reactor system temperature control can be operated in three different modes isothermal (temperature of the reactor contents is constant), isoperibolic (temperature of the jacket is constant), or adiabatic (reactor contents temperature equals the jacket temperature). Critical operational parameters can then be evaluated under conditions comparable to those used in practice on a large scale, and relationships can be made relative to enthalpies of reaction, reaction rate constants, product purity, and physical properties. Such information is meaningful provided effective heat transfer exists. The heat generation rate, qr, resulting from the chemical reactions and/or physical characteristic changes of the reactor contents, is obtained from the transferred and accumulated heats as represented by Equation (3-17) ... 

Factors involved in heat transfer, such as surface-to-volume ratio, agitation characteristics, mixing efficiency, fouling of heat transfer surfaces, scale of operations, and the resulting heat exchanged depend on the system under consideration (e.g., liquid-liquid transfer, liquid-gas transfer, free convection, or forced convection). Standard chemical engineering texts and reference books contain detailed discussions on heat transfer in process equipment. Only a brief summary follows ... 

Biochemical processes such as protein unfolding/refold-ing and supramolecular assembly/disassembly take place on a time scale of seconds to minutes after readjusting the temperature of a system. Most commercially available glass-jacketed cuvettes are not suitable for temperature jumps on this time scale, as a result of the slow kinetics of heat transfer across substances with characteristically high dielectric constants, and their use can convolute the time scale of the temperature change onto the time scale... 

All chemical processes regardless of type involve various mechanisms in addition to the desired chemical conversion, such as chemical reactions, thermodynamic, physical, and chemical equilibria, heat transfer, and mass transfer, which are not independent from one another, thus making it difficult to study their interactions. For example, transfer phenomena essentially depend on fluid flow. In other words, the scale or size of the equipment in which the process takes place has a different effect depending on the mechanism concerned. Extrapolation using geometric similarity can be proved extremely useful in determining the effect of size on a number of characteristic magnitudes of the system. This is shown in Table 6.2. 

This second method does not lend itself to the development of quantitative correlations which are based solely on true physical properties of the fluids and which, therefore, can be measured in the laboratory. The prediction of heat transfer coefficients for a new suspension, for example, might require pilot-plant-scale turbulent-flow viscosity measurements, which could just as easily be extended to include experimental measurement of the desired heat transfer coefficient directly. These remarks may best be summarized by saying that both types of measurements would have been desirable in some of the research work, in order to compare the results. For a significant number of suspensions (four) this has been done by Miller (M13), who found no difference between laboratory viscosities measured with a rotational viscometer and those obtained from turbulent-flow pressure-drop measurements, assuming, for suspensions, the validity of the conventional friction-factor—Reynolds-number plot.11 It is accordingly concluded here that use of either type of measurement is satisfactory use of a viscometer such as that described by Orr (05) is recommended on the basis that fundamental fluid properties are more readily determined under laminar-flow conditions, and a means is provided whereby heat transfer characteristics of a new suspension may be predicted without pilot-plant-scale studies. 

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