Using Reactor Combinations

Farbenindustrie in Germany implemented such a concept to produce polystyrene commercially in the 1930s. Two CSTRs in parallel followed by a plug flow reactor were used in their process. During World War II, Union Carbide applied for a patent (US Patent 2496653, 1950) for a continuous polystyrene process. Their process consisted of three cascade CSTR reactors followed by a plug flow reactor. The temperature in the three CSTR reactors is 100, 115-120 and 140 °C, respectively. The conversion at the outflow of the third CSTR reactor is around 85 %. The temperature in the plug flow reactor is between 210 and 215 °C. The final conversion at the plug flow reactor was claimed to be 97 %. 

Other chemical companies have also designed their own continuous process to produce high-impact polystyrene (HIPS), such as the Dow process, which consists of three elongated reactors in series (US Patent 2727 884, 1955) the BASF process, which consists of a prepolymerization CSTR followed by cascade of three CSTRs (US Patent 3 658 946, 1972) the Shell process, which consists of three CSTRs followed by a plug flow reactor (US Patent 4011 284, 1977) and the Monsanto process, which consists of a CSTR followed by a horizontal plug flow reactor (US Patent 3 903 202, 1975). 

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This chapter develops the techniques needed to analyze multiple and complex reactions in stirred tank reactors. Physical properties may be variable. Also treated is the common industrial practice of using reactor combinations, such as a stirred tank in series with a tubular reactor, to accomplish the overall reaction. 

When reaction and mixing are the only two processes present, the AR may be constructed using reactor combinations involving PFRs, CSTRs, DSRs and mixing only. There is no requirement to devise new (perhaps novel) reactor types that might serve to extend the AR boundary further. Instead, we can focus our attention on arranging combinations of these three fundamental reactor types in an optimal arrangement. 

A variety of nuclear reactor designs is possible using different combinations of components and process features for different purposes (see Nuclear REACTORS, reactor types). Two versions of the lightwater reactors were favored the pressurized water reactor (PWR) and the boiling water reactor (BWR). Each requites enrichment of uranium in U. To assure safety, careful control of coolant conditions is requited (see Nuclearreactors, water CHEMISTRY OF LIGHTWATER REACTORS NuCLEAR REACTORS, SAFETY IN NUCLEAR FACILITIES). 

Eigure 3 is a flow diagram which gives an example of the commercial practice of the Dynamit Nobel process (73). -Xylene, air, and catalyst are fed continuously to the oxidation reactor where they are joined with recycle methyl -toluate. Typically, the catalyst is a cobalt salt, but cobalt and manganese are also used in combination. Titanium or other expensive metallurgy is not required because bromine and acetic acid are not used. The oxidation reactor is maintained at 140—180°C and 500—800 kPa (5—8 atm). The heat of reaction is removed by vaporization of water and excess -xylene these are condensed, water is separated, and -xylene is returned continuously (72,74). Cooling coils can also be used (70). 

The reactor combinations for the two reactors in series consist of two fixed-beds for the Arco process an expanded bed followed by a catalytic distillation reactor for lEP a fixed-bed followed by a catalytic distillation reactor for CDTECH and two fixed-beds for Phillips. The Huls process uses an adiabatic reactor for the second reactor. 

Erom 1955—1975, the Ziegler-Natta catalyst (91), which is titanium trichloride used in combination with diethylaluminum chloride, was the catalyst system for propylene polymerization. However, its low activity, which is less than 1000 g polymer/g catalyst in most cases, and low selectivity (ca 90% to isotactic polymer) required polypropylene manufacturers to purify the reactor product by washing out spent catalyst residues and removing unwanted atactic polymer by solvent extraction. These operations added significantly to the cost of pre-1980 polypropylene. 

To illustrate the power of the object-oriented style of representation, consider the reactor diagnosis example used eadier in the discussion of rules. Assume that there are several reactors, R-101, R-102, etc, each served by a common cooling system. Relating coolant malfunctions to the temperature in each reactor would need multiple rules, or rules with multiple disjunctions. Instead, if rules are used in combination with the object representation described above, a single general rule can be written to cover all the specific instances, as follows. 

In addition to secondarv resistance control, other devices such as reactors and thyristors (solid-state controllable rectifiers) are used to control wound-rotor motors. Fixed secondary reactors combined with resistors can provide veiy constant accelerating torque with a minimum number of accelerating steps. The change in slip frequency with speed continually changes the effective reac tance and hence the value of resistance associated with the reactor. The secondaiy reactors, resistors, and contacts can be varied in design to provide the proper accelerating speed-torque curve for the protection of belt conveyors and similar loads. 

The external events PSA was based on standard methods used for commercial reactor PSAs, Fire risk was estimated from commercial nuclear power plant data combined with industrial fire information. The seismic hazard was evaluated using a combination of the EPRI and LLNL ( UREG/CR-.3250) databases. Wind hazards were analyzed by EQE, Inc., using NRC-based nicihodulogy. 

Products from the reactor are recovered in the main fractionator a J the gas plant. The main fractionator recovers the heaviest produc, such as light cycle and decanted oil, from the gasoline and ligh r products. The gas plant separates the main fractionator overhead vap< s into gasoline, Cj s, C4 s and fuel gas. The products contain sulfur compounds and need to be treated prior to being used. A combination of amine and caustic solutions are employed to sweeten these products... 

Various reactor combinations are used. For example, the product from a relatively low solids batch-mass reactor may be transferred to a suspension reactor (for HIPS), press (for PS), or unagitated batch tower (for PS) for finishing. In a similar fashion, the effluent from a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) may be transferred to a tubular reactor or an unagitated or agitated tower for further polymerization before devolatilization. 

Metals are widely u.sed in catalysis. In some specific cases they are applied in the form of gauzes, but usually a higher dispersion (even up to 90%) is aimed for. A major reason for this is the price of the metals (very often noble metals are used), in combination with an optimized use of the reactor volume. The ratio of number of surface atoms (ns) to the total number of atoms (nr) is called the dispersion , also known as D ... 

It is useful to combine reaction and separation for equilibrium-limited reactions and also for consecutive reactions, particularly when the desired intermediate products undergo faster undesirable reactions. The concept of extractive reactions for equilibrium-limited and consecutive reactions has been covered in Section 4.2.1. Distillation column reactors provide yet another strategy. 

Absorbance detectors are also commonly used in combination with postcolumn reactors. Here, most issues of detector linearity and detection limit have to do with optimization of the performance of the reactor. In a typical application, organophosphorus compounds with weak optical absorbances have been separated, photolyzed to orthophosphate, and reacted with molybdic acid, with measurement being performed by optical absorbance.58... 

You have been asked to design a small pilot plant facility for the production of cyclohexane using some combination of existing tubular reactors. The reactor descriptions are as follows ... 

Several hundred tons of L-methionine per year are produced by enzymatic conversion in an enzyme membrane reactor. An alternative approach is dynamic resolution, where the unconverted enantiomer is racemized in situ. Starting from racemic /V-acetyl-amino acid, the enantioselective L-acylase is used in combination with an TV-acyl-amino acid racemase to enable nearly total conversion of the substrate. 

The dead-end setup is by far the easiest apparatus both in construction and use. Reactor and separation unit can be combined and only one pump is needed to pump in the feed. A cross-flow setup, on the other hand, needs a separation unit next to the actual reactor and an additional pump to provide a rapid circulation across the membrane. The major disadvantage of the dead-end filtration is the possibility of concentration polarization, which is defined as an accumulation of retained material on the feed side of the membrane. This effect causes non-optimal membrane performance since losses through membrane defects, which are of course always present, will be amplified by a high surface concentration. In extreme cases concentration polarization can also lead to precipitation of material and membrane fouling. A membrane installed in a cross-flow setup, preferably applied with a turbulent flow, will suffer much less from this... 

The CRE approach for modeling chemical reactors is based on mole and energy balances, chemical rate laws, and idealized flow models.2 The latter are usually constructed (Wen and Fan 1975) using some combination of plug-flow reactors (PFRs) and continuous-stirred-tank reactors (CSTRs). (We review both types of reactors below.) The CRE approach thus avoids solving a detailed flow model based on the momentum balance equation. However, this simplification comes at the cost of introducing unknown model parameters to describe the flow rates between various sub-regions inside the reactor. The choice of a particular model is far from unique,3 but can result in very different predictions for product yields with complex chemistry. 

Fluorescence is not widely used as a general detection technique for polypeptides because only tyrosine and tryptophan residues possess native fluorescence. However, fluorescence can be used to detect the presence of these residues in peptides and to obtain information on their location in proteins. Fluorescence detectors are occasionally used in combination with postcolumn reaction systems to increase detection sensitivity for polypeptides. Fluorescamine, o-phthalaldehyde, and napthalenedialdehyde all react with primary amine groups to produce highly fluorescent derivatives.33,34 These reagents can be delivered by a secondary HPLC pump and mixed with the column effluent using a low-volume tee. The derivatization reaction is carried out in a packed bed or open-tube reactor. 

In this chapter, the work carried out in our laboratory using a combined UHV-high pressure reactor system will be reviewed. In addition to studies of... 

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