Types and Fundamental Properties of Reactors

The many preexponential factors, activation energies and reaction order parameters required to describe the kinetics of chemical reactors must be determined, usually from laboratory, pilot plant, or plant experimental data. Ideally, the chemist or biologist has made extensive experiments in the laboratory at different temperatures, residence times and reactant concentrations. From these data, parameters can be estimated using a variety of mathematical methods. Some of these methods are quite simple. Others involve elegant statistical methods to attack this nonlinear optimization problem. A discussion of these methods is beyond the scope of this book. The reader is referred to the textbooks previously mentioned. 

In many practical applications, the engineer often has only plant performance data to use to backcalculate kinetic parameters. Data of this type are seldom extensive enough to permit precise calculation of all parameters since the plant normally operates in a fairly narrow window of operating conditions. However, useful simplified kinetics and parameters can often be determined that describe the major kinetics inside this region. Extrapolation outside the region from which the data has been obtained is very risky. 

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