Ideal design with effectiveness factors

Batch polymerization reactors are ideal to manufacture small volume polymers, specialty polymers, and polymers that are difficult to make in continuous reactors. Emulsion polymers, suspension polymers, and precipitation polymers are mostly made by batch polymerization processes. One of the disadvantages of a batch reactor is that the ratio of heat transfer surface area to reactor volume decreases as the reactor size is increased. For many polymer products made in batch reactors, the process economy improves with an increase in reactor size. Therefore, effective heat removal becomes a critical factor in designing and controlling a large-scale batch polymerization reactor. 

A water distillation plant to produce heavy water containing 99.8 a/o D from natural water containing 0.015 percent D is designed as an ideal cascade without stripping with a separation factor of 1.03. The plant s inventory of water is effectively all in the liquid phase. The depth of liquid on each distillation plate is 30 cm. The plate efficiency is 100 percent. The liquid downflow rate is 1 cm /s per cm of column cross section. Using Eq. (12.204), what would be an upper bound for the equilibrium time ... 

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