Information requirements and experimental design

There are vastly different levels of knowledge requirement in the study of multiphase chemical reactions, depending on the objective of the study. Development of a chemical process rarely requires an in-depth understanding of the kinetics and mechanism, and industrial chemists work on a strict need to know basis, since the acquisition of non-essential information is regarded as a waste of money. A key and difficult judgement is that of deciding what constitutes a minimum information requirement. For the industrial chemist, it will 

A procedure for diagnosing the reacting phase and kinetic regime (film or bulk) using readily available equipment is shown in Fig. 5.28. This level of investigation will rarely satisfy the requirements of an academic study, for which one or more of the techniques described in Section 5.3 will be required. 

It is evident from the foregoing that the study of multiphase reactions requires a set of skills additional to those provided in the undergraduate education and training of most chemists and chemical engineers. The new concepts required are easy to grasp, as is their application to chemical process development in the laboratory, but the more sophisticated 

Atherton, J.H. (1994) Mechanism in two-phase reaction systems coupled mass transfer and chemical reaction. Research in Chemical Kinetics, 2, 193. 

Cooper, J.A. and Compton, R.G. (1998) Channel electrodes a review. Electroanalysis, 10, 141. Cussler, E.L. (1984) Diffusion Mass Transfer in Fluid Systems. Cambridge University Press, New York. Dankwerts, P.V. (1970) Gas-Liquid Reactions. McGraw-Hill, New York. 

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