Optimal multiple reactor system design

Dynamic Modeling of Molecular Weight and Particle Size Development and Application to Optimal Multiple Reactor System Design... 

Pollock, M. J., MacGregor, J. F., and Hamielec, A. E. (1981) Continuous poly (vinyl acetate) emulsion polymerization reactors dynamic modeling of molecular weight and particle size development and application to optimal multiple reactor system design. Computer Applications in Applied Polymer Science, (ed. T. Provder), ACS, Washington, pp. 209-20. 

These numbers show that the optimal economic steady-state design is the multiple-stage reactor system. The higher the conversion, the larger the economic incentive to have multiple stages. At 95 percent conversion, the capital cost of a three-CSTR process is 67 percent that of a one-CSTR process. At 99 percent conversion, the cost is only 38 percent. Thus, if only steady-state economics is considered, the design of choice in these numerical cases is a process with two or three CSTRs in series. 

There are innumerable industrially significant reactions that involve the formation of a stable intermediate product that is capable of subsequent reaction to form yet another stable product. These include condensation polymerization reactions, partial oxidation reactions, and reactions in which it is possible to effect multiple substitutions of a particular functional group on the parent species. If an intermediate is the desired product, commercial reactors should be designed to optimize the production of this species. This section is devoted to a discussion of this and related topics for reaction systems in which the reactions may be considered as sequential or consecutive in character. 

The alternative to traditional scale-up, proposed in the context of microreaction technology and coined scale-out or numbering-up , has attracted considerable academic interest. With this approach, the system of interest is studied only on a small scale in so-called microreactors and the final reactor design is simply a multiplication of interconnected small-scale devices. No attempt is made at large-scale optimization. Instead, the optimal functioning point is found for a small-scale device by empirical laboratory studies and then is simply reproduced by replication into the large interconnected structure. 

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