Reactor drawbacks

Using supercritical water is not without its drawbacks, two of which are the high pressures and temperatures involved. Another difficulty is the extreme corrosive nature of water at supercritical conditions. If halogenated organics are treated, special alloy reactors are requited. 

Sohd catalysts are widely employed because they are usually cheap, are easily separated from the reaction medium, and are adaptable to either flow or nonflow reactors. Their drawbacks are lack of specificity and possibly high temperatures and pressures. 

The main drawback to nuclear power is the production of radioactive waste. Spent fuel from a nuclear reactor is considered a high-level radioactive waste, and remains radioactive for a veiy long time. Spent fuel consists of fission products from the U-235 and Pu-239 fission process, and also from unspent U-238, Pu-240, and other heavy metals produced during the fuel cycle. That is why special programs exist for the handling and disposal of nuclear waste. 

Interesting features of this process include the potential for one-stage methanation to completion without the need for gas recycle. This feature was cited by Chem Systems, but, according to Rheinpruessen-Koppers work on the Fischer-Tropsch (52, 53), gas recycle was necessary with high H2 CO ratios. Drawbacks include such factors as catalyst attrition (48, 50), and low volume productivities of the methanator (less than one-tenth that reported for fixed bed adiabatic reactors) (48, 50, 52, 53, 61). 

Pyrolysis of scrap tires was studied by several mbber, oil, and carbon black industries [14]. Pyrolysis, also known as thermal cracking is a process in which polymer molecules are heated in partial or total absence of air, until they fragment into several smaller, dissimilar, random-sized molecules of alcohols, hydrocarbons, and others. The pyrolysis temperature used is in the range of 500°C-700°C. Moreover, maintenance of partial vacuum during pyrolysis in reactors lowered the economy of the process. Several patents were issued for the pyrolysis of worn out tires to yield cmde oil, monomers, and carbon black in economic ways [15-18]. The major drawback of chemical recycling is that the value of the output is normally low and the mixed oils, gases, and carbon black obtained by pyrolysis cannot compete with similar products from natural oil. Pyrolyzing plant produces toxic wastewater as a by-product of the operation [19]. 

The first study on the oxidation of arylmethanes used this reaction as a model to show the general advantages of electrochemical micro processing and to prove the feasibility of an at this time newly developed reactor concept [69]. Several limits of current electrochemical process technology hindered its widespread use in synthetic chemistry [69]. As one major drawback, electrochemical cells stiU suffer from inhomogeneities of the electric field. In addition, heat is released and large contents of electrolyte are needed that have to be separated from the product. 

Another major drawback stems from the disperse nature of the system itself involving a size distribution of the bubbles in the continuous liquid, which can be broad. The interface is not as defined as for two-phase continuous reactors, as described in Section 5.1.1. However, in the case of making foams, regular micro flow structures, such as hexagon flow, were described [22]. 

Major drawbacks of the MR are the higher cost (although steadily decreasing), the lower catalyst load compared to a TBR, and the relatively little experience with this type of reactor. Due to the higher cost of monolithic catalysts only processes in which the catalyst is reasonably stable and/or easy to regenerate are feasible. 

It is clear that the use of batch reactors has some serious drawbacks. For the production of larger quantities, mnltiple batch mns have to be performed and this often leads to batch to batch variation in prodnct qnahty and performance. Furthermore, the productivity is often lower than for dedicated continnons reactors and fixed costs are higher cansed by high operator efforts. Therefore, switching to continuons processes holds great appeal, if we can find a device that is snitable for multiple products. 

In spite of the drawbacks enumerated above, fluidized bed reactors have a number of compelling advantages, as we have noted previously. By proper design it is possible to overcome their deficiencies so that their advantages predominate. This book does not discuss in detail the manner in which this problem can be solved, although the design considerations outlined in subsequent sections of this chapter are quite pertinent. For detailed treatments of fluidized bed reactor design, consult the excellent reference works by Kunii and Levenspiel (3) and by Davidson and Harrison (4). 

The highly oxygenated bio oil can be de-oxygenated, and thereby upgraded, over acidic zeolite catalysts through the formation of mainly water at low temperatures and C02 and CO at higher temperatures [1-3], Successful catalytic pyrolysis of woody biomass over Beta zeolites has been performed in a fluidized bed reactor in [4]. A drawback in the use of pure zeolitic materials has been the mechanical strength of the pelletized zeolite particles in the fluidized bed. 

Table 1 reports a wide spectrum of typologies of biofilm reactor upflow anaerobic sludge bed (UASB), fluidized bed, airlift, fixed bed with and without recycle, mechanically agitated vessel, rotating drum and rotating biological contactor. Each reactor is characterized by positive features and drawbacks. 

For the elucidation of chemical reaction mechanisms, in-situ NMR spectroscopy is an established technique. For investigations at high pressure either sample tubes from sapphire [3] or metallic reactors [4] permitting high pressures and elevated temperatures are used. The latter represent autoclaves, typically machined from copper-beryllium or titanium-aluminum alloys. An earlier version thereof employs separate torus-shaped coils that are imbedded into these reactors permitting in-situ probing of the reactions within their interior. However, in this case certain drawbacks of this concept limit the filling factor of such NMR probes consequently, their sensitivity is relatively low, and so is their resolution. As a superior alternative, the metallic reactor itself may function as the resonator of the NMR probe, in which case no additional coils are required. In this way gas/liquid reactions or reactions within supercritical fluids can be studied... 

As already discussed, the enhanced conversion is due to the separation of the products from the reaction zone. This can be realized via different distribution coefficients of the compounds (and consequently, a separation of the components) or via (selective) adsorption on a support. Since in the first case the compound travels through the reactor with different speeds, a continuous feed would cause repeated mixing of the separated compounds. Therefore, no improvement can be expected. In the second case, a regeneration of the adsorbent is needed after a certain operative period. This is an inherent drawback of the discontinuous operation of the fixed-bed chromatographic reactor. 

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