A Systematic Procedure for the Assessment of the Thermal Safety and for the Design of Chemical Processes at the Boiling Point

Abstract

A systematic procedure is presented for application in designing safe processes or in assessing safety of existing processes that are performed at or could reach the boiling point. The evaporative cooling is very efficient, but the maximal rate of heat dissipation is limited by two factors.One is the flooding of the vapor tube; the second is the swelling of the reaction mass due to ebullition. No reliable method is available for predicting the behaviour of a reactor at boiling point. For both cases, correlations are proposed for calculating the maximum admissible rate of heat release. They are based on the physico-chemical properties of the boiling solvent and on the geometric data of the reactor.These tools are linked together in a general procedure for the design of safe reaction processes where the boiling point plays an important role. They can also be used to assess the safety of existing processes.