What needs to be found now is the length a reactor that will convert 65% of the

ethane that is in the gas stream to ethylene. There are two equations that govern
the reaction of ethane to ethylene. These equations are shown below.

The reactions that are dictated by the above equations tend to be irreversible at
low to intermediate conversions (0% to 70%). At high conversions (>70%) the
reactions become reversible and reactants start to form. That is why the
conversion is limited to 65%.

The rate of consumptions of ethane based on equations 1 and 2 are shown below:
Equations for the rate of consumption of reactants and rate of formation of
products can be written based on equation 5 shown below:

The R(i)'s are found by using equations 3 and 4 and the stoichiometry
coefficients of equations 1 and 2. The final form of the R(i)'s are shown below:

The final equations for the rate of consumption and rate of formation (the set of
ordinary differential equations, ODE's) are found by combining equation 5 with
equations 6 to 10. These equations are displayed below:
Now the issue of temperature is considered. As can be seen below, the heat of
reaction of equations 1 and 2 are positive. This means that the reactions are
endothermic

The gas feed to the reactor needs to be heated in order for any product to form.
That is why the pipe is enclosed inside a furnace. Due to this heating and the
change in temperature of the gas stream a sixth ordinary differential equation is
needed. This ODE will represent the change of temperature along the volume of
the reactor. Another issue to consider is the set point for the furnace
temperature. This temperature is set at a point where the heat transfer by
radiation dominate all other forms of heat transfer. The picture below displays
the schematic of how the furnace, the pipe's wall, and the gas stream
temperature interact.

Equation 18 below displays how the temperature of the furnace, the pipe's wall,
and the gas stream interact with one another.
Equation 19 below displays the ODE for the temperature of the gas stream along
the volume of the reactor.
The final form of the temperature's ODE is found by combining equations 18
and 19. This ODE is displayed below as equation 20.

Now the temperature's ODE is in terms of the gas stream, and the wall
temperature. But the wall temperature is not known. Only the furnace
temperature is given. In fact, the wall temperature changes as the the gas stream
temperature change. A form of a successive substitution method is used to find
the temperature of the wall. This method method is called the Newton-Raphson
method. The equations that are used in the Newton-Raphson method to calculate
the wall temperature at a given gas stream temperature are displayed below.
In order for the Newton-Raphson method to work, an initial guess for the wall
temperature is needed. For this guess the wall temperature is set equal to the gas
stream temperature.

The modeling of the reaction process in now complete. To solve for the length of
the reactor, equations 3, 4,11-15, 20 and the equations for the Newton-Raphson
method are plugged into MATLAB along with the different constants that are
involved in the equations (NOTE: units are very important. They need to be
checked to make sure that they are correct.) The inlet flow rates of the different
components of the gas stream as well as the inlet temperature must be specified.
The initial and final volume of the reactor need to be specified to provide a rang
over which MATLAB will integrate the differential equations. The command
that is used to integrate the ordinary differential equations in MATLAB is the
ode45 command. To avoid a stiff problem when integrating the temperature's
ODE, the temperatures of the gas stream and the pipe's wall are divided by 100.
However, the true value for the gas stream temperature is the value that is used
to solve for the wall temperature in the Newton-Raphson method.

There are two checks that need to be done to confirm that the right problem is
being solved. The first check is done to see if the equations are written correctly.
This check is done by first changing the initial values so that they are not zero or
one, and then executing a number of right hand side calculations by hand and
comparing the answers obtained with what MATLAB register as values for the
equations when using the initial values in them. The second check is done to see if
the Newton-Raphson method provides the correct wall temperature. This check
is done by plugging different values for the gas stream temperature and
calculating the wall's temperature. Then the value found for the wall
temperature is compared with the gas stream, and the furnace temperature. If
the value for the wall temperature is in between the value for the gas stream
temperature and the furnace temperature then the Newton-Raphson method
calculates the correct wall temperature.

A typical case is solved using the procedure discussed above and the results are
shown here. For this case the inlet flow rate of ethane and water are 571 and
190Ib-mole/hr, respectively. All the other inlet flows are equal to zero. The inlet
temperature is 350K and the furnace temperature is set at 1311K. After solving
the problem, the final reactor volume obtained that will result in a 65%
conversion of ethane to ethylene turn out to be 160 cubic-feet. Using a pipe
radius of two inches, the length of the reactor can be calculated. After all the
calculations, the final length turn out to be 1833.5 feet.