A rigorous model of the cooling circuits in industrial scale suspension PVC
reactors has been formulated and solved numerically by using the method of
characteristics. Dedicated experimental tests have been performed with pur
e water in the reactors in order to extract reliable heat transfer data. Th
e model has been tested for on-line prediction of the reaction rate and con
version. A comparison is made with a kinetic model, previously published by
Kiparissides et al. (1997 Ind. Engng Chem. Res. 36, 1253-1267). Results sh
ow that the predicted reaction rates based on the cooling circuit model con
tains significant noise due to the large heat capacity of the suspension an
d limited resolution in the temperature measurements. Filtering of the reac
tion rates eliminates the problem, but introduces undesired time delay. The
kinetic model shows good agreement with predicted reaction rates. Combined
with conversion estimates based on the energy balance the kinetic model ha
s been found to offer a reliable on-line estimate for the reaction rates. (
C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.