Introduction of novel characteristic time quantities to describe chemical reactors

Abstract

The Mean Residence Time is a quantity which is used very often to characterise chemical reactors. This quantity can be calculated using the Residence Time Distribution of a specific, continuous reactor and assuming closed-closed boundary conditions. Many reactors in the industry though, are discontinuous ones and the direct application of these methods is in general not possible. This work presents a new distribution, the Local Residence Time Distribution, which observes each position in a specific reactor. Furthermore, two new, local quantities, the Mean Distribution Time and the Mean Dead Time, are introduced, which can be applied as characteristic times to evaluate the internal behaviour of chemical reactors used for discontinuous processes such as fermentations.

Keywords

• Mean distribution time
• Mean dead time
• Local residence time Distribution
• Mixing efficiency
• Reactor characterization
• Computational fluid dynamics