Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.33, No.1, 41-55, 1994
Investigation of Micromixing in Stirred-Tank Reactors Using Parallel Reactions
Parallel reactions were used to investigate how product distributions can depend upon micromixing. A two-reaction test system consisted of the competition for sodium hydroxide between neutralization with hydrochloric acid and alkaline hydrolysis of ethyl monochloroacetate. A three-reaction system comprised these same reactions together with alkaline hydrolysis of methyl monochloroacetate. For stirred tank reactors, operated in the semibatch mode, the inhomogeneous turbulence was modeled by specifying the trajectory of the reacting fluid as well as the energy dissipation rates in the regions through which it was convected. The engulfment model of micromixing, combined with this experimental flow model, was then integrated to compute product distributions for the two- and three-reaction systems. This analysis compared well with experiments at three levels of initial concentrations, three volume ratios, various stirrer speeds, three feed positions, two sequences of reagent addition, tanks with dished and flat bottoms, and three tank sizes. The experimental flow model was extended to tanks with a turbine diameter larger than the standard one-third tank diameter, by proposing distributions of the velocity and energy dissipation fields. Measured product distributions using three sizes of turbine agreed reasonably well with the model predictions. Given reliable local hydrodynamic information, especially energy dissipation rates, it should now be possible to predict the product distribution of any parallel reaction that is influenced by micromixing.
Keywords:REACTION SYSTEM;MODEL