THE ATTAINABLE REGION FOR SEGREGATED, MAXIMUM MIXED, AND OTHER REACTOR MODELS

It is common practice in process synthesis to choose a reactor structu re and use the free parameters associated with it to optimize the syst em. It is of some importance to assess how effective such an approach is. A geometric (attainable region) approach is used to find the bound s on the performance of reactor systems, and these are compared with t he complete attainable region. It is shown for instance that the conve rsions obtained in segregated and maximimum mixed reactors are not gen eral bounds on conversion. Even two or more environment reactor models need not be sufficiently general to provide bounds on conversion. Giv en a proposed reactor system, it is thus possible to compare the achie vable conversions with those of the complete attainable region. This p rovides a useful test to determine whether significant improvements in reactor performance can be obtained by using alternative reactor stru ctures.