Reactor heat generation

The thermal plasma is a source of high energy density with temperature of a few thousand degrees and high ultraviolet radiation. These result in fast reaction rates, high throughput in smaller reactors, heat generation independent of the chemical composition, avoidance of dioxins and furans... 

Having now determined to total amount of nuclear electricity required, the thorium fuel input to the energy amplifiers can be calculated from the design data of Rubbia and Rubio (1996). The thermal output from the prototype design reactor is 1500 MW, with a fuel amount of 27.6 t in the reactor (Fig. 5.42). The fuel will sit in the reactor heat-generating unit for 5 years, after which the "spent" fuel will be reprocessed to allow for manufacture of a new fuel load with only 2.9 t of fresh thorium oxide supply. This means that 2.6/5 t y of thorium fuel is required for delivery of 5 x 1500 MWy of thermal power over 5 years, or 675 MWy of electric power, of which the 75 MWy is used for powering the accelerator and other in-plant loads. The bottom line is that 1 kg of thorium fuel produces very close to 1 MWy of electric power, and 1 kt thorium produces close to 1 TWh. ... 

The system disclosed herein includes generally a power unit, herein referred to as the neutronic reactor, a complete heat extracting or cooling circuit adapted to remove from the reactor heat generated as a result of the... 

Reactor Heat Generation 22.2.1 Fission Energy in Reactor... 

Carbon dioxide is used in the manufacture of sodium carbonate by the ammonia-soda process, urea, salicyclic acid (for aspirin), fire extinguishers and aerated water. Lesser amounts are used to transfer heat generated by an atomic reactor to water and so produce steam and electric power, whilst solid carbon dioxide is used as a refrigerant, a mixture of solid carbon dioxide and alcohol providing a good low-temperature bath (195 K) in which reactions can be carried out in the laboratory. 

A reactor system is shown in Figure 2 to which the HAZOP procedure can be appHed. This reaction is exothermic, and a cooling system is provided to remove the excess energy of reaction. If the cooling flow is intermpted, the reactor temperature increases, leading to an increase in the reaction rate and the heat generation rate. The result could be a mnaway reaction with a subsequent increase in the vessel pressure possibly leading to a mpture of the vessel. 

In the most common production method, the semibatch process, about 10% of the preemulsified monomer is added to the deionised water in the reactor. A shot of initiator is added to the reactor to create the seed. Some manufacturers use master batches of seed to avoid variation in this step. Having set the number of particles in the pot, the remaining monomer and, in some cases, additional initiator are added over time. Typical feed times ate 1—4 h. Lengthening the feeds tempers heat generation and provides for uniform comonomer sequence distributions (67). Sometimes skewed monomer feeds are used to offset differences in monomer reactivity ratios. In some cases a second monomer charge is made to produce core—shell latices. At the end of the process pH adjustments are often made. The product is then pumped to a prefilter tank, filtered, and pumped to a post-filter tank where additional processing can occur. When the feed rate of monomer during semibatch production is very low, the reactor is said to be monomer starved. Under these... 

The batch process is similar to the semibatch process except that most or all of the ingredients are added at the beginning of the reaction. Heat generation during a pure batch process makes reactor temperature control difficult, especially for high soHds latices. Seed, usually at 5—10% soHds, is routinely made via a batch process to produce a uniform particle-size distribution. Most kinetic studies and models are based on batch processes (69). 

Most nuclear reactors use a heat exchanger to transfer heat from a primary coolant loop through the reactor core to a secondary loop that suppHes steam (qv) to a turbine (see HeaT-EXCHANGETECHNOLOGy). The pressurized water reactor is the most common example. The boiling water reactor, however, generates steam in the core. 

Fluid coking uses two vessels a reactor and a burner coke particles are circulated between the two to transfer heat generated by burning a portion of the coke to the reactor. The reactor holds a bed of fluidized coke particles, and steam is introduced at the bottom of the reactor to fluidize the bed. 

The chlorination is mostly carried out in fluidized-bed reactors. Whereas the reaction is slightly exothermic, the heat generated during the reaction is not sufficient to maintain it. Thus, a small amount of oxygen is added to the mixture to react with the coke and to create the necessary amount of heat. To prevent any formation of HCl, all reactants entering the reactor must be completely dry. At the bottom of the chlorination furnace, chlorides of metal impurities present in the titanium source, such as magnesium, calcium, and zircon, accumulate. 

Fig. 15. Temperature vs heat generation or removal in estabHshing stationary states. The heavy line (—) shows the effect of reaction temperature on heat-generation rates for an exothermic first-order reaction. Curve A represents a high rate of heat removal resulting in the reactor operating at a low temperature with low conversion, ie, stationary state at a B represents a low rate of heat removal and consequently both a high temperature and high conversion at its stationary state, b and at intermediate heat removal rates, ie, C, multiple stationary states are attainable, c and The stationary state at c ...

Manufacture. Titanium chloride is manufactured by the chlorination of titanium compounds (1,134—138). The feedstocks usually used are mineral or synthetic mtile, beneficiated ilmenite, and leucoxenes. Because these are all oxygen-containing, it is necessary to add carbon as well as coke from either coal or fuel oil during chlorination to act as a reducing agent. The reaction is normally carried out as a continuous process in a fluid-bed reactor (139). The bed consists of a mixture of the feedstock and coke. These are fluidized by a stream of chlorine iatroduced at the base (see Fluidization). The amount of heat generated in the chlorination process depends on the relative proportions of CO2 or CO that are formed (eqs. 1 and 2), and the mechanism that... 

Equipment Constraints These are the physical constraints for individual pieces of eqiiipment within a unit. Examples of these are flooding and weeping limits in distillation towers, specific pump curves, neat exchanger areas and configurations, and reactor volume limits. Equipment constraints may be imposed when the operation of two pieces of equipment within the unit work together to maintain safety, efficiency, or quahty. An example of this is the temperature constraint imposed on reactors beyond which heat removal is less than heat generation, leading to the potential of a runaway. While this temperature could be interpreted as a process constraint, it is due to the equipment limitations that the temperature is set. 

The above equations for heat transfer apply when there is no heat generation or absorption during the reaction, and the temperature difference between the solid and the gas phase can be simply defined tliroughout the reaction by a single value. Normally this is not the case, and due to the heat of the reaction(s) which occur tlrere will be a change in the average temperature with time. Furthermore, in tire case where a chemical reaction, such as the reduction of an oxide, occurs during the ascent of tire gas in the reactor, the heat transfer coefficient of the gas will vary with tire composition of tire gas phase. 

Assuming that the reactor contains about 500 moles of products, which should have generated about 350 MJ, it can be seen that the upper limit of the heat loss is 15% of the heat generated by the reaction. 

A useful approximation to estimate the possibility of a particular reaction which depends on internal heat generation to produce the products in the proper state for separation is to ignore the heat losses from die reactor, and assumes an average heat capacity calculated from die Neumann-Kopp law... 

Complete or very high conversion requires the study of catalyst at very low concentrations. At such conditions, close to equilibrium (Boudart 1968), all reactions behave according to first order kinetics. Study at very low concentrations is also helped by the very small heat generation, so these studies can be executed in small tubular reactors, placed in simple muffle furnaces. Such studies were made by Kline et al (1996) at Lafayette College and were evaluated by Berty (1997). 

The steady-state operation of any reactor requires that the heat removed should equal the heat generated ... 

The original van Heerden diagram, as presented in his paper of 1953, was constructed for an adiabatic reactor case. In that case, at fixed feed temperature, there was a different slope (representing heat removal rate) for each feed rate. There was also a different heat generation versus temperature... 

Thermal runaway reactions are the results of chemical reactions in batch or semi-batch reactors. A thermal runaway commences when the heat generated by a chemical reaction exceeds the heat that can be removed to the surroundings as shown in Figure 12-5. The surplus heat increases the temperature of the reaction mass, which causes the reaction rate to increase, and subsequently accelerates the rate of heat production. Thermal runaway occurs as follows as the temperature rises, the rate of heat loss to the surroundings increases approximately linearly with temperature. However, the rate of reaction, and thus the... 

A runaway reaction occurs when an exothermic system becomes uncontrollable. The reaction leads to a rapid increase in the temperature and pressure, which if not relieved can rupture the containing vessel. A runaway reaction occurs because the rate of reaction, and therefore the rate of heat generation, increases exponentially with temperature. In contrast, the rate of cooling increases only linearly with temperature. Once the rate of heat generation exceeds available cooling, the rate of temperature increase becomes progressively faster. Runaway reactions nearly always result in two-phase flow reliefs. In reactor venting, reactions essentially fall into three classifications ... 

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