LABORATORY REACTORS 1 - GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Modeling of monolith reactors from first principles presents a valuable tool in the design of such reactors and in the analysis of the underlying phenomena. The results presented show that the reactor behavior can be adequately described and understood by a combination of the reactor s transport characteristics and the intrinsic kinetics obtained with a laboratory reactor of another type. As such we can generalize monolith models to other reaction networks, e.g., extend the given description of the dynamic operation for combined CO oxidation and NO reduction in the automotive exhaust gas converter to include other reactions, like the oxidation of various hydrocarbons and of hydrogen. The availability, however, of a proper kinetic model is a definite prerequisite. 

Microreactors are chemical reactors that are much smaller than typical industrial scale reactors, on the order of 1000 times smaller than the smallest reactors that were used for large-scale chemical production in the 1990s. Generally, they have a volume of 10 cm or less and characteristic length scales on the order of 1 mm or less. Presently, microreactors are used mainly in research laboratories. However, projections suggest that the microreactors will soon be used in consumer products and in devices for medical laboratories. 

It is not straightforward to successfully manufacture a particular latex product, which is generally developed in a laboratory batch or semibatch reactor, in a commercial continuous emulsion polymerization system (e.g., a continuous stirred tank reactor). This is simply because the characteristics of continuous stirred tank reactors are dramatically different from those of batch and semibatch reactors. As a consequence, the particle nucleation process and kinetics experienced in batch or semibatch emulsion polymerization systems cannot be directly applied to continuous systems consisting of stirred tank reactors. 

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