Bench scale reactor

Today s Shape of Micro-reactor Bench-scale Plants ... 

Performance-test Laboratory reactor, Bench-scale plant... 

The Kerr-McGee Company developed a similar ITSL process. ° ° The conditions in the SCT reactor were more severe than in the Lummus ITSL, resulting in significant distillate production in the SCT reactor. Bench-scale studies showed that the high temperature in the SCT reactor also increased gas production. 

FIGURE 6.1 Simplified diagram of the one-reactor bench-scale unit. 

The results of the two-reactor bench-scale unit are discussed first in this section to analyze the effect of reaction conditions on impurities removal and changes in product properties. The results of the one-reactor bench-scale unit are reported later to develop the kinetics of the different noncatalytic reactions. 

The reactors (bench-scale and commercial scale) operate in dynamic regime. 

One goal of catalyst designers is to constmct bench-scale reactors that allow determination of performance data truly indicative of performance in a full-scale commercial reactor. This has been accompHshed in a number of areas, but in general, larger pilot-scale reactors are preferred because they can be more fully instmmented and can provide better engineering data for ultimate scale-up. In reactor selection thought must be given to parameters such as space velocity, linear velocity, and the number of catalyst bodies per reactor diameter in order to properly model heat- and mass-transfer effects. 

Over 25 years ago the coking factor of the radiant coil was empirically correlated to operating conditions (48). It has been assumed that the mass transfer of coke precursors from the bulk of the gas to the walls was controlling the rate of deposition (39). Kinetic models (24,49,50) were developed based on the chemical reaction at the wall as a controlling step. Bench-scale data (51—53) appear to indicate that a chemical reaction controls. However, flow regimes of bench-scale reactors are so different from the commercial furnaces that scale-up of bench-scale results caimot be confidently appHed to commercial furnaces. For example. Figure 3 shows the coke deposited on a controlled cylindrical specimen in a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and the rate of coke deposition. The deposition rate decreases with time and attains a pseudo steady value. Though this is achieved in a matter of rninutes in bench-scale reactors, it takes a few days in a commercial furnace. 

As an example the use of ceramic membranes for ethane dehydrogenation has been discussed (91). The constmction of a commercial reactor, however, is difficult, and a sweep gas is requited to shift the product composition away from equiUbrium values. The achievable conversion also depends on the permeabihty of the membrane. Figure 7 shows the equiUbrium conversion and the conversion that can be obtained from a membrane reactor by selectively removing 80% of the hydrogen produced. Another way to use membranes is only for separation and not for reaction. In this method, a conventional, multiple, fixed-bed catalytic reactor is used for the dehydrogenation. After each bed, the hydrogen is partially separated using membranes to shift the equihbrium. Since separation is independent of reaction, reaction temperature can be optimized for superior performance. Both concepts have been proven in bench-scale units, but are yet to be demonstrated in commercial reactors. 

Fluid bed processes have been subject to many problems and uncertainties in development and scale up from bench-scale reactors. The fluidization behavior of each process seems different and very often does not meet expectations based on experience with earlier plants. With hindsight fluid cat cracking seems to be an ideal system from the point of view of easy operation and straightforward scale up. 

A bench-scale study of the hydrogenation of nitrobenzene was investigated by Wilson [2]. In this study, nitrobenzene and hydrogen were fed at a rate of 65.9 gmol/lir to a 30 cm internal diameter (ID) reactor containing the granular catalyst. A thermocouple sheath, 0.9... 

This study was run in a laboratory bench-scale unit with 0.75-in. reactor tubes. The catalysts were sized to 10 X 12 mesh and diluted nine-to-one with Si02 in order to spread the reaction out through the bed and to permit measurement of temperature profiles, the profile being an... 

Bench-Scale Reactor. The bench-scale reactor is 0.81 in. i.d. and 48 in. long. The nominal feed gas rate for this unit is 30 standard cubic feet per hour (scfh) the feed gas is supplied from premixed, high-pressure gas cylinders. Except for reaction temperature, the bench-scale unit is substantially manually operated and controlled. The catalysts used in these studies were standard commercial methanation catalysts ground to a 16-20 mesh size which is compatible with the small reactor diameter. 

Findings with PDU. Work with the PDU largely paralleled the bench-scale reactor tests there was one important addition—extensive three-phase fluidization studies. As was mentioned, the PDU is equipped with a traversing gamma-ray density detector that is capable of measuring bed density to within dbO.Ol specific gravity units. Thus, we could measure and correlate fluidized bed expansion as a function of liquid and gas velocities and physical properties, and could also determine the... 

The performance of a novel microwave-induced pyrolysis process was evaluated by studying the degradation of HDPE and aluminiutn/polymer laminates in a semibatch bench-scale apparatus. The relationship between temperature, residence time of the pyrolytic products in the reactor, and the chemical composition of the hydrocarbon fraction produced was investigated. 28 refs. 

A pilot plant for the high temperature pyrolysis of polymers to recycle plastic waste to valuable products based on rotating cone reactor (RCR) technology. The RCR used in this pilot plant, the continuous RCR was an improved version of the bench-scale RCR previously used for the pyrolysis of biomass, PE and PP. 9 refs. 

Industrial Engineering Chemistry Research 37, No.6, June 1998, p.2293-300 RECYCLING OF POLYETHENE AND POLYPROPENE IN A NOVEL BENCH-SCALE ROTATING CONE REACTOR BY HIGH-TEMPERATURE PYROLYSIS Westerhout R W J Waanders J Kuipers JAM van Swaaij W P M Twente,University... 

The realization of complete bench-scale micro reactor set-ups is certainly still in its infancy. Nevertheless, the first investigations and proposals point at different generic concepts. First, this stems from the choice of the constructing elements for such set-ups. Either microfluidic components can be exclusively employed (the so-caUed monolithic concept) or mixed with conventional components (the so-called hybrid or multi-scale concept). Secondly, differences concerning the task of a micro-reactor plant exist. The design can be tailor-made for a specific reaction or process (specialty plant) or be designated for various processing tasks (multi-purpose plant). 

Reaction calorimetry is a technique which uses data on the rate of heat evolution or consumption to evaluate the thermokinetic reaction characteristics needed for reactor scale-up and/or optimization and safety. Since the late seventies, the application of this technique has been steadily growing and reaction calorimeters are now commercially available. Probably the first commercial reactor calorimeter was developed by CIBA-GEIGY (Bench Scale Calorimeter BSC) (see Beyrich et al, 1980 and Regenass et al., 1978, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1997))... 

We have developed a thermomorphic catalyst system for the hydroformylation of higher alkenes. We have built a bench-scale continuous reactor and have used it to determine the long-term performance of the thermomorphic catalyst system. Longterm results (>400 h) using 1-octene and 1-dodecene show that the catalyst has high selectivity and no measurable loss in activity. 

Silveston et al. (1994) use a one-dimensional plug flow model to represent the packed bed in the final stage. Because the intent of their work was to model the experiments of Briggs et al. discussed earlier, they allowed for heat loss or gain in the bench scale reactor used by Briggs through wall... 

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