Heat exchangers chemical additives

At times it may be desirable to chemically clean various parts of the boiler plant and its auxiliaries. The reason may be curative or preventative. With low-pressure boilers and heat-exchange equipment, cleaning is carried out to restore heat transfer, and, for boilers, to prevent overheating. With higher pressure boilers, the restoration of heat transfer is trivial and, whilst some overheating may be avoided, the main reason for chemical cleaning is to prevent corrosion. In nuclear plant, an additional reason for cleaning is to remove radioactive material and improve safety. 

In order to exemplify the potential of micro-channel reactors for thermal control, consider the oxidation of citraconic anhydride, which, for a specific catalyst material, has a pseudo-homogeneous reaction rate of 1.62 s at a temperature of 300 °C, corresponding to a reaction time-scale of 0.61 s. In a micro channel of 300 pm diameter filled with a mixture composed of N2/02/anhydride (79.9 20 0.1), the characteristic time-scale for heat exchange is 1.4 lO" s. In spite of an adiabatic temperature rise of 60 K related to such a reaction, the temperature increases by less than 0.5 K in the micro channel. Examples such as this show that micro reactors allow one to define temperature conditions very precisely due to fast removal and, in the case of endothermic reactions, addition of heat. On the one hand, this results in an increase in process safety, as discussed above. On the other hand, it allows a better definition of reaction conditions than with macroscopic equipment, thus allowing for a higher selectivity in chemical processes. 

Internal heat exchange is realized by heat conduction from the microstructured reaction zone to a mini channel heat exchanger, positioned in the rear of the reaction zone [1,3,4], The falling film micro reactor can be equipped, additionally, with an inspection window. This allows a visually check of the quality of film formation and identification of flow misdistribution. Furthermore, photochemical gas/liquid contacting can be carried out, given transparency of the window material for the band range of interest [6], In some cases an inspection window made of silicon was used to allow observation of temperature changes caused by chemical reactions or physical interactions by an IR camera [4, 5]. 

In this chapter, we focus on the characteristics of the ideal-flow models themselves, without regard to the type of process equipment in which they occur, whether a chemical reactor, a heat exchanger, a packed tower, or some other type. In the following five chapters, we consider the design and performance of reactors in which ideal flow occurs. In addition, in this chapter, we introduce the segregated-flow model for a reactor as one application of the flow characteristics developed. 

High-intensity inline devices are often used to mix fluids in the process industries. Such devices include simple pipes, baffled pipes, tees, motionless mixers, dynamic mixers, centrifugal pumps, ejectors, and rotor/stator mixers. In addition to their traditional application in physical processes such as mixing and dispersion, such devices can provide very effective environments for mass transfer and chemical reaction to take place. Furthermore, combining effective inline mixing with heat transfer is the basis of combined heat exchanger reactors (HEX reactors). 

In addition to the harmonization of the underlying physical and chemical processes, the catalytic-plate heat exchanger offers a cost-effective alternative to both conventional multitubular reactors and catalytic microreactors for industrial... 

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