Reactors, ideal models

The diversity of chemistry applied in the manufacture of today s chemical products finds its mirror image in the number of different reactor types. Nonetheless, it is possible to model the majority of industrially relevant reactor types with the help of four ideal reactors or their combination by suitable abstraction. In doing so, continuous, semi-continuous and purely discontinuous reactor types and manufacturing procedures are discriminated. 

From a safety technical point of view continuous reactors have the advantages that 

For the purely discontinuous reactor operation the ideally mixed batch-reactor, BR, is used. All educts and solvents are charged initially. Under agitation the mixture is warmed up until the desired process temperature is reached. The reactor is operated at this temperature for a certain reaction time tg, which corresponds to the desired conversion. This is followed by an operational phase to isolate the product. From a safety technical point of view the BR is the reactor causing a maximum of problems, for 

The fourth model of an ideal reactor can be described as a sort of combination of CSTR and BR. It is the semi-continuously operated, ideally mixed, stirred batch reactor, SBR. This is operated by charging one or more components and auxiliary materials initially and feeding at least a second reactant, with or without further auxiliary materials, at a constant rate over a certain period. 

This mode of operation is accompanied by advantages in comparison to pure batch operation, which from a safety point of view cannot be estimated high enough  

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As with continuous processes, the heart of a batch chemical process is its reactor. Idealized reactor models were considered in Chapter 5. In an ideal-batch reactor, all fluid elements have the same residence time. There is thus an analogy between ideal-batch reactors and plug-flow reactors. There are four major factors that effect batch reactor performance ... 

Basic Concepts in Reactor Design and Ideal Reactor Models... 

The bread and butter tools of the practicing chemical engineer are the material balance and the energy balance. In many respects chemical reactor design can be regarded as a straightforward application of these fundamental principles. This section indicates in general terms how these principles are applied to the various types of idealized reactor models. 

In this chapter, we describe several ideal types of reactors based on two modes of operation (batch and continuous), and ideal flow patterns (backmix and tubular) for the continuous mode. From a kinetics point of view, these reactor types illustrate different ways in which rate of reaction can be measured experimentally and interpreted operationally. From a reactor point of view, the treatment also serves to introduce important concepts and terminology of CRE (developed further in Chapters 12 to 18). Such ideal reactor models serve as points of departure or first approximations for actual reactors. For illustration at this stage, we use only simple systems. 

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