CL324

Chemical Reaction Engineering-I

Chapter-0 Summary
Part-I

Introduction and Overview of Chemical

Reaction Engineering
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Example: Ethylene oxide (EO) production
• Ethylene oxide is used for making many consumer products as well as
non-consumer chemicals and intermediates. These products include
• detergents, thickeners, solvents, plastics,
• ethylene glycol (antifreeze, manufacture of polyester),
• ethanolamines, simple and complex glycols, polyglycol ethers, and other
compounds, including polysorbate 20 and polyethylene glycol (PEG).
Discovery of EO
• Ethylene oxide (EO) first prepared in 1863 by Charles Wurtz.
• It was made reacting 2-chloroethanol (liquid with boiling point of 127
°C, toxic with an LD50 of 89 mg/kg in rats) with KOH or NaOH at
elevated temperatures
𝐶2 𝐻4 + 𝐶𝑙2 + 𝐻2 𝑂 → 𝐻𝑂 − 𝐶𝐻2 − 𝐶𝐻2 − 𝐶𝑙 + 𝐻𝐶𝑙
𝐶𝑙 − 𝐶𝐻2 − 𝐶𝐻2 − 𝑂𝐻 + 𝐾𝑂𝐻 → 𝐶𝐻2 𝐶𝐻2 𝑂 + 𝐾𝐶𝑙 + 𝐻2 𝑂
chlorohydrin or chloroalcohol

• In principle, one can take 2-chloroethanol and KOH and add it to a

modified beaker, and allow formation of EO. Ensure that the beaker is
sealed and that the EO formed can be captured. EO is a colorless gas
with a boiling point of 10.4 °C.
Batch reactor

• The batch reactor is operated as follows:

• Send reactant 1 and 2 till tank is filled till desired volume.
• Stop flow in or out of reactor. Start the stirrer and begin the chemical
reaction.
• After some time stop the stirrer and empty out the tank.
To produce large quantities we need
continuous operation

Industrial scale tubular reactor Industrial scale continuous stirred tank reactor
What is Chemical Reaction Engineering ?
Chemical kinetics is the study of chemical reaction rates and
mechanisms.

Chemical Reaction Engineering or CRE combines the study of chemical

kinetics with the design of reactors in which the reactions take place.

CRE is at the heart of the production of practically all industrial

chemicals.

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Which industry requires CRE ?
• Chemical Process Industries
• Pharmaceuticals-Medicines
• Micro-electronics
Other areas that draw heavily on CRE include
• Waste management
• Energy- Oil recovery, coal burning, catalytic cracking
• Biotechnology

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Importance of this course
• Reactors play an important part in chemical technology.
• Since most chemical plants would involve conversion of a raw
material into a useful product, both physical and chemical processes
would appear at different stages.
• Physical separation equipment are called unit operations. These will
be mostly covered in Mass Transfer courses.
• We shall focus of the chemical or unit processes in this course.

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Objectives of reactor design

Raw Separation Chemical Separation Products

material Process process Process By-products

• Chemical reactions are carried out in reactors. Designing reactors is

complicated. Many alternatives can be proposed for a process.

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Objectives of reactor design

Raw Separation Chemical Separation Products

material Process process Process By-products

• The main objectives while designing a reactor are:

• Convert most reactant molecules into product molecules, i.e., reduce wastage
of materials.
• Require conditions which are easily attainable, in terms of temperature,
pressure, concentrations.
• Construction of reactor equipment is economically feasible.
• Economically viable operation, less polluting.

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 How do you design a reactor ?

Reactor design uses information, knowledge and experience from a variety of areas -
thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, and
economics.

CRE is the synthesis of all these factors with the aim of properly designing and
understanding the chemical reactor.

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 How do we design a chemical reactor?
Type & size

Maximize the space-time yield of the desired product (productivity

kg/hr/m3)

Stoichiometry
Kinetics
Basic molar balances Reactor volume
Fluid dynamics
Catalysis ?
Use a lab-scale reactor to determine the kinetics!
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 What type of reactor(s) to use?

Continuously Stirred
Tank Reactor (CSTR)

Plug flow reactor (PFR)

Well-mixed batch reactor
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Reactor Design

Reaction
Stoichiometry
Kinetics: elementary vs non-elementary
Single vs multiple reactions

Reactor
Isothermal vs non-isothermal
Ideal vs nonideal
Steady-state vs nonsteady-state

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How does one go about it?
• The fundamental principles required for reactor design include:
• Chemical kinetics (to be covered in this course)
• Chemical thermodynamics
• Fluid mechanics
• Heat transfer
• Mass transfer
• Concepts involving scaling up of lab-scale or pilot-plant scale experiments
• Economics (to be covered in a later course)
• A chemical engineer can arrive at different reactor designs, all of which
may be able to carry the desired reactions.
• Out of the several reactor designs available, the optimal reactor design is
selected based on several considerations.
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