Flow regimes, multiphase reactor selection

These methods hardly take spatial distributions of velocity field and chemical species or transient phenomena into account, although most chemical reactors are operated in the turbulent regime and/or a multiphase flow mode. As a result, yield and selectivity of commercial chemical reactors often deviate from the values at their laboratory or pilot-scale prototypes. Scale-up of many chemical reactors, in particular the multiphase types, is still surrounded by a fame of mystery indeed. Another problem relates to the occurrence of thermal runaways due to hot spots as a result of poor local mixing effects. 

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