METU UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

CHEMICAL REACTION ENGINEERING II: (CHEG3122)

BY: ASEFASH.G
1. OVERVIEW:

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1.1 RECTOR DESIGN AND ITS APPLICATIONS

The conversion process of any raw materials to

products could pass through a number of steps.

The steps might be simple or complex depending on the

characteristics of reaction
Raw Product

1 2 3
4

Materials Wanted and

unwanted
Products

Fig.1 Typical Chemical Process

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CONT’D…
The steps of conversion can be stated as:

Step1.Physical preparation of raw materials

;Purification ,Grinding etc.

Step 2. Chemical process with partial conversion

Step 3. Separation of non-converted raw material

(obtained from step 2)

Step4. Separation of unwanted and wanted

products.
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CONT’D…
In the above processes, the steps 1, 3 and 4 are
physical treatments and are mainly carried out in unit
operations. Step 2 is the chemical treatment process /
which is carried out in the reactors /

The steps of a chemical process can be simple or

complex, depending upon the purity of the raw material,
the desired quality of the products etc.

The main objective of the chemical reaction process is

to secure quality of the desired products with a
minimum cost of production
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CHEMICAL REACTION ENGINEERING (CRE):

CRE

Reaction Engineering I Reaction Engineering II

(ChEg3121) (ChEg3122)

Deals with the design of

Deals with the rates and the reactors in
mechanisms of which chemical
chemical reactions. reactions take place.
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CRE CONT’D…
 The main objective of the chemical rxn engineering is to
design appropriate reactor and or analysis of
performance of chemical reactors to secure quality of the
wanted products with a minimum cost of production using
the tools of chemical reaction engineering.
 is concerned with the rational design and/or analysis of
performance of chemical reactors.

In another word it is a means to determine something

about the reactor: size, flow and thermal configuration,
product distribution, etc…
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 CRE CONT’D…
A chemical reactor

• Is the “heart” of an overall chemical or biochemical

process

• is a device in which change in composition of matter

occurs by chemical reaction

• is used to carry out the reaction and that is used as a

tool for determining something about the reacting
system: rate of reaction, and dependence of rate on
various factors, such as concentration of species j(cj)

and temperature (T)

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CRE CONT’D…
• Is a device also involved in energy production, as in
engines (internal-combustion, jet, rocket, etc.) and
in certain electrochemical cells (lead-acid, fuel), in
animate objects (e.g., the human body),etc..

• Design includes determining the type, size,

configuration, cost, and operating conditions of the
device

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 CRE CONT’D…
The cost of production depends on step 2, i.e., appropriate
design of a reactor. To ensure good designing of a
reactor in the chemical treatment under step 2, it needs:
Information, knowledge, and experience from a variety of
areas-thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, fluid mechanics,
heat transfer, mass transfer, and economics etc.
• To answer the following two questions:
• What changes can we expect to occur?:-
Thermodynamics
• How quickly will they take place? :-Kinetics
The second question deals with the various rates of
processes such as chemical kinetics, heat transfer and

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mass transfer.

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CRE CONT’D
Thermodynamics Fluid Flow Mathematics

Kinetic

Mass transfer
Chemical
Reactor
DHeat
esitransfer
gn

Material
Chemical
Economics Process $P

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CRE CONT’D…
o Reactors performance is described mainly by
material balance equation and
rate equation
oReactors performance is measured by

Fraction of unreacted
conversion
Yield
Selectivity

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 CRE CONT’D…

 Generally there are four basic forms of homogeneous

chemical reactors which differ from each other in their
mixing pattern

1.2. CLASSIFICATIONS OF RECTORS:

Reactors can be classified in a variety of ways:

 based on the size,

 method of operation

 the phase involved in the process

 Process nature of reaction

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CONT’D…
 Generally the basic reactors are classified
 The batch reactor (BR)
 The semi-batch reactor (SBR)

 The continuous-stirred tank reactor(CSTR)

 The plug-flow reactor (PFR)
 In the above, all reactors are also named based on
the thermal operations such as isothermal,
adiabatic and non-isothermal reactors.

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CONT’D…
 Most of the industries now a days are working with
heterogeneous catalytic reactors, some of them are:
•Fixed Bed Gas Reactors
•Non-isothermal, Non-adiabatic Fixed Bed (NIHAF)
Reactors.
•Fixed Bed Gas-Liquid Reactors.
oTrickle Bed Reactors
oFixed Bed Bubble Reactors(FBBR)
•Fixed Bed Reactors

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CONT’D…
•Suspended Bed Reactors.

o Continuous Stirred-Tank Reactors(CSTR)

o Slurry Reactors

• Bulleted Bed Reactors

• Three Phase Transport Reactors

 The design procedure for homogeneous and heterogeneous reactors is
essentially the same and consists of establishing
 material balance and energy balance for specific type of reactors
involved
 finding the appropriate rate of equation and
 solving the required size of the reactor or other parameters

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1.3 DESIGN CONCEPT
 The design of a reactor involves the following
concepts:

1.3.1 Steady-State Condition Concept:

 This is a condition, where at the operation the variables at each

point within the system do not vary with the time. Therefore, in
the reactor the following variables remain unchanged with the
time.

• The concentration of the reactants and products.

• The reaction temperature
• The reaction rate

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CONT’D…
o On the other side, this type of operation is simple to model
(simple equipment) and accomplish in the case of continuous
reactors.

1.3.2 Unsteady-State Condition Concept:

o This is opposite to the steady-state condition i.e., the

compositions change with time and therefore,
accumulations exist. This type of reactor is complicated to
model and only used in batch reactor.

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CONT’D…
1.3.3 Ideal concept in the reactor:

o The contents of the reactor are instantaneously and perfectly

mixed i.e., ideally mixed, so that the condition through out the
reactor remains the same.

1.3.4 Calculation Concept (already covered in Rxn Eng’g I)

Conversion, Selectivity, yield……….

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CONT’D…
1.3.5 Material Balance:

A material balance on any reactant species can be

drawn up through the following equations:

Conducting a mole balance on species j at any given

instant of time which obeys the following equation
format.

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 CONT’D…
 
or expressed in mathematical form of equation

------------ (1)

Where Fj,o – represents initial molar flow rates of

species j, mol/time.

Fj - represents final molar flow rates of

species j,mol/time.

Nj – represents the number of moles of

species j in the system of time t.

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CONT’D…
 
Gj – represents rate of formation at which
component is formed or disappeared by reaction,
and it is given by the product of the reaction
volume, V and the rate of formation of species j, rj

………….(2)

oSuppose that the rate of formation of a species j

for the system volume varies with the position of
the system, i.e.

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CONT’D…
 
Then the total rate of formation within the system
volume would be the sum total of all the rates of
formation.

By taking limit

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CONT’D…
Thus, the General Mole Balance of species A on
System Volume V is

Using this basis of equation, the design equation

can be developed for various types of industrial
reactors. Of course one need to find rj using
chemical kinetics.

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CONT’D…
Batch Reactor

In a batch reactor, no material is supplied to or withdrawn

from the reactor during the reaction. The amounts of
individual components may change due to reaction, but not
due to flow in or out of the system.

(FAO = FA )

The rate of formation of species j is uniform and is equal

to the system average rate, every where in the reaction,

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CONT’D…
And therefore, we can take the rate of formation out of
the integral

Time necessary to reduce

the number of moles
of A from NAO to NA

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CONT’D…
Continuous Flow Reactors

In this type of reactors, the chemical reactions occur

while the reacting stream is flowing through the reactor.

The reaction is operated at steady-state and this means

that the variables such as concentration, temperature etc.
at each point with in the system do not vary with time

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CONT’D…
a) Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR)

In this type of reactors, due to continuous stirring,

vigorous agitation takes place. As a result, the
contents are thoroughly mixed and the conditions
through out the reactor are the same and equal to the
conditions at the outlet

For the same reason, the rate of formation is

constant throughout the reactor.

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CONT’D…
Reactor equipped with an impeller to ensure proper mixing.
Thus, the rate of formation is constant through the reactor.

CSTR volume necessary to reduce the molar flow rate from FAO
to FA.

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CONT’D…
b) Plug Flow Reactor

 In this reactor type, the content of the reactor is

perfectly mixed in the radial direction.

 No mixing takes place in axial direction. This

condition provides the concentration, temperature,
rate of formation etc. to vary continuously in the
axial direction.

 Hence the material balance has to be applied to a

differential element of volume

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CONT’D…
The differential element of volume can be expressed
in equation form as under:

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1.4 ENERGY BALANCE
 
o A similar word statement as of material balance can be used for
energy balance, i.e the application of the principle of
conservation of energy leads to an energy balance which is in
general states that:
[1.10]

o In principle, all forms of energy, like heat, kinetic energy,

potential energy, electrical and magnetic field must be
taken into consideration.

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CONT’D…
o In most reactor calculations, the terms with thermal energy
and work done on the surroundings are of the main
importance.

o Hence, leaving out the other effect, the energy balance for
an open system in which reaction takes place, illustration
is given in the following fig.,Figure 1.2

HF dH HE
dt

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CONT’D….
o Figure 1.2 Energy balance on an open system: HF – inflow

of enthalpy; HE – outflow of enthalpy; Q – rate of heat

supply from the surrounding or withdrawn from the system
Using equation (1.10) the energy balance for the above
open system is
dH
HF  HE  Q  ( 1.10.1)
dt
Or

dH (1.10.2)
H F  H E  KA(TS  T ) 
dt

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CONT’D…
 o The enthalpy change should be expressed into two
elements:
i. The enthalpy change with time due to the change in
composition. In another word, the energy change due
to the heat of the reaction.

ii. The enthalpy change due to the change of temperature

o If we now substitute the enthalpy change to equation

(1.10.2), we obtain

H R ( rV ) dt  mT C P dT
H F  H E  KA(TS  T ) 
dt

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CONT’D…
Or
( H F  H E )dt  KA(TS  T )dt  H R ( rV )dt  mT C P dT

o Rearranging the equation, we can now write the general

energy balance for the system
dT
mT CP  H R ( rV )  ( H F  H E )  KA(TS  T )
dt
Where:mT – the total mass of reaction mixture
K-Overall heat transfer coefficient
TS - Surrounding (cooling, heating) temperature
A - Effective area for heat transfer
T- The temperature of the reaction mixture
∆HR - Heat of reaction
Cp- the specific heat for the composition mixture

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CONT’D…
o To put this general energy balance equation in a more
applicable form, there are two conditions for modification:

In a batch process where there is no in- and out-flow, then the

energy balance equation yields to

dT
mT C P  H R (rV )  KA(TS  T )
In a continuousdt process where accumulation is not
existing, the energy balance equation then becomes

H F  H E  dH  KA(TS  T )

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CONT’D…
Where
dH  FR C P dT  H R (rV ) (1.12)
Then, the enthalpy balance for continuous process is

FRC P dT  H R (rV )  KA(TS  T ) (1.13)

1.5 Designing of a Reactor

o In a reactor design, the main parameters are to choose the type
of reactor, to select the method of operation and to find the size
of the reactor.
o In this selection, common types of reactors and operation
methods are known. Therefore, the choice of reactor would be
made on the basis of profit, safety and environmental factors
which will influence the reactor performance.

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CONT’D…
o Sizing of a reactor means to determine the reactor volume
necessary to achieve a specified conversion. The condition
in the reactor varies with position as well as with the time
and therefore, it is necessary to find the rate equation.
o Normally the rate of reaction is expressed in terms of the
concentration, but not in terms of conversion. However, we
need to express the concentration of the reacting species in
terms of conversion, for which we use stoichiometry
relationship for batch and flow processes.
1.5.1 Batch Process….
1.5.2 Flow reactors…
1.6 Conversion in multiple rxn…

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