Reactor Network Design Using the Attainable Region

3 REACTOR NETWORK DESIGN USING THE ATTAINABLE REGION 

This section describes the use of the attainable region (AR), which defines the achievable ohii-positions that may be obtained from a network of chemical reactors. This is analogous to die topic of feasible product compositions in distillation, presented in Section 7.5. The attainaUe region in composition space was introduced by Horn (1964), with more recent developnots and extensions by Glasser and co-workers (Glasser et al. 1987 Hildebrandt et al., 1990). 

---

Reactor Network Design Using the Attainable Region 221... 

Be able to determine if a reactor network should be considered and, if so, design it using the concept of the attainable region. 

Clearly, the optimal reactor design minimizes the annualized cost, computed to account for the capital and operating costs, and not simply the design that maximizes the yield or selectivity. Nonetheless, the maximum attainable region identifies the entire space of feasible concentrations. The following example shows how the attainable region is used to select the most appropriate reactor network to maximize the yield of a desired product where a number of competing reactions occur. 

---