Title.

Heterogeneous Reactors

Author Eduardo Herrera Alvarez

Introduction.
In the Chemical Industry there are two types of reactions: homogeneous and heterogeneous. In
the first type reactants and products are in the same state of matter (liquid, gas or solid).
However, in the heterogeneous either the reactants or products are in another phase and this type
of reaction is used in many current processes like the production of VPC, Urea,Benzene,etc. In
many of the heterogeneous reactions a catalyst is use.
According to Fogler (2020) A catalyst is a substance that affects the rate of a reaction but
emerges from the process unchanged. It usually changes a reaction rate by promoting a different
molecular path for the reaction and does not affect the equilibrium.

Development.
For the rate equation of heterogeneous reactors, we use the mass of solid catalyst W instead of
the volume of the reactor. This is because the greater the mass of a given catalyst, the greater the
reactive surface area.

If we multiply the heterogeneous reaction rate for the catalyst density we obtain the the
reaction rate per unit volume

Packed Bed Reactor

 Figure.1 A packed bed reactor

This reactor is full of catalyst inside that is why we called it packed bed. It is use in several
chemical processes, for example in the synthesis of SO3, sulfuric acid, etc.
The design equation is very similar to the plug flow reactor equation, we just change the volume
for the catalyst mass as explain before.

The advantage of this reactor is that the mass transfer has no effect, but the heat transfer does.

Fluidized Bed Reactor

Fluidization is the operation by which solid particles are transformed into a fluidlike state
through suspension in a gas or liquid. This method of contacting has some unusual
characteristics, and fluidization engineering puts them to good use. (Kunii, Levenspiel,

The most important use of this type of reactor is in the Fluid Catalytic Process in which the gas
oil is “cracked” to produce gasoline, light gas oil and other compounds.
 Figure 2. A fluid catalytic cracking unit

In the fluidized bed reactor, the heat transfer has no effect due to the small size of the catalyst
particles.

We can apply the equations of the CSTR reactor to the fluidized changing the volume for the
catalyst mass as usual.

Conclusion.
The heterogeneous reactors are an important equipment for the synthesis of many important
products. Knowing their design equations allows the chemical engineer to being able of
designing almost every current chemical process. Chemical reactor design is the most important
course for every chemical engineer because that is what makes us different from other
engineering.

APA References.
Fogler, H. (2021). Elements of chemical reaction engineering (6a ed.). Pearson.
 Froment, G. F. (2011). Chemical reactor analysis and design (3a ed.). John Wiley &
Sons.

Kunii, D., & Levenspiel, O. (1991). Fluidization Engineering (H. Brenner, Ed.; 2a ed.).
Butterworth-Heinemann.