OPTIMAL REACTOR STRUCTURES FOR EXOTHERMIC REVERSIBLE-REACTIONS WITH COMPLEX KINETICS

Exothermic reversible reactions are industrially very significant. Pre vious work has looked at finding the Attainable Region for elementary kinetics and in this paper we extend the work to find optimal reactors for more complex kinetics. Using these results we show how the comple xity of the kinetics affects the nature of the optimal reactor. In par ticular it is found that the optimal reactor structure includes a nove l element, namely two parallel structures, thr first of which has preh eating followed by the following reactors connected in series: a plug flow reactor, CSTR, plug flow reactor and finally differential side st ream reactor, while the second structure is a plug flow reactor. The s ide streams in the DSR are taken from various points along the plug fl ow reactor making up the second parallel structure. Furthermore, it is also shown that in order to satisfy tangency conditions on the bounda ry of the Attainable Region, the rate of reaction of the material in t he side stream to the DSR and that in the DSR at the point where the s ide stream is added must be equal. The equations describing the DSR op eration as well as the conditions describing the operation of the othe r reactors in the optimal reactor structure are given.