CHEMICAL REACTION ENGINEERING DESIGN PROJECT

AIM: Design of CSTR reactor for RTD study with Pulse input at various reactor volume, agitation speed and reactor diameter.

Experimental Equipment
The basic experimental setup consists of several components: the reactor, a stopwatch, three graduated cylinders, three buckets, a balance, baffles, and a conductivity meter. For this experiment an aqueous salt solution enters from the top of the reactor and is deflected by a horizontal plate in order to minimize vertical mixing effects. Baffles are utilized to increase turbulence through agitation and prevent the formation of vertices and dead zones. The fluid exits the bottom of the reactor where the effluent is collected for analysis.

Theory
In an ideal CSTR (or mixed reactor), the contents are well-stirred and uniform throughout; the exit stream has the same composition as the fluid within the vessel. However, real reactors never fully follow these ideal flow patterns. In this experiment, we will quantify the deviation of the CSTR from ideality using the residence time distribution (RTD) approach. To characterize the extent of the nonideal flow, the system will be disturbed by quickly injecting a pulse of inert tracer (sodium hydroxide) into the CSTR. Measurements of the tracer concentration in the reactor effluent will then be obtained from the conductivity readings recorded by the computer.

RESULTS: Thus the experiment of CSTR pulse input was conducted and average residence time , variance and dispersion number were calculated.