Fundamentals of Chemical Reaction Technology

The reactor types in use today can be classified according to different criteria  

In practice a combination of the criteria is used (e.g., homogeneous, continuous, adiabatic, plug flow). 

This variety of reactor types reflects the complex interaction between chemical reaction and mass and heat transfer. In spite of this complexity, in principle every reactor can be described by the fundamental balance equations for the preservation of mass, energy, and impetus. These form a system of five partial differential equations (PDFs), coupled through temperature, concentation, and three rate vectors [Damkohler 1936, Platzer 1996, Adler 2000]. 

PDE1 The law of the conservation of energy in the form of the extended continuity equation describes the change in concentration in space and time of component A that reacts in the reactor according to Vf A products (A in mol L Equation 2.2-1)  

The first term on the right-hand side is the so alled convective term (flow term of forced convection), where u is the vector field of the flow velocity. The second term is the so-called conductive term (effective dififiision. Section 2.1.3). The third term is the reaction term (Section 3.1.3), with the reaction rate per unit volume ry and the stoichiometric coefficient Va- The final term is the mass-transfer term with the mass transfer coefficient (Section 2.1.3), the specific mass-transfer area as, and the concentration difference AA between boundary surface and bulk phase. 

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