Homework 2: Chemical Reaction Engineering,

CHE 625: Problem 2

Bankole Temitayo S. [80034560]
February 10, 2015

Problem statement:

Given a volume fraction of dye (Inert) in the outlet of a packed bed reactor, Obtain the mean and
the variance of the E-plot for the outlet concentration of dye in a packed bed reactor.
Plot the internal age distribution of the reactor.

Assumptions:

Dye is of negligible density

Pulse input of the inert tracer(dye) introduced at time t0 .
Length of reactor = 48cm.
Diameter of reactor = 14cm.
No dye was detected at ta < 25 and ta > 75.

Methods
1. C curve was transcribed into numeric data
2. The graph was normalised.
3. Appropriate relationships were employed to obtain the unknowns in the problem statement

For a pulse input the C-curve is related to the external age distribution by the following relationship:




C tc = t = E ta = t t0
Where

[A]out (tc )
C tc =
N
A

vin

The mean time is given by the following relationship:

R 0
ta E(ta 0 )dta 0
tmean = = 0 R
0
0
0 E(ta )dta
This gives

tmean = 18.004 mins

The variance is given by :

R
2

=
This gives

(ta )2 E(ta 0 )dta 0

R
0
0
0 E(ta )dta

2 = 69.8852 mins

The internal age distribution I(ta ) is given as :



Z ta
1
E(ta )dta
1
I(ta ) =

ta =0

The corresponding plots are given below:

C curve
18
16

Volume reactor dye * 105

14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
20

30

40

50
60
Clock Time(mins)

Figure 1: C-curve

70

80

E curve
18
16

External Age fraction

14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

10

20
30
ta Age Time(mins)

40

50

40

50

Figure 2: E-curve
Icurve
0.06

Internal Age Fraction

0.05

0.04

0.03

0.02

0.01

10

20
30
t Age Time(mins)
a

Figure 3: I-curve

1
2
3
4

Appendix
function [] = mycre()
% chemical reaction engineering homework
% conversion of a c curve to an e curve
% read data from excel sheet

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6

num = xlsread('cre','B2:C49');

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8

timet = num(:,1)-25;

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t times Et = timet.*num(:,2);
discretization = min(timet):(max(timet) - min(timet))/500:max(timet);

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13

splineoutput t Et = spline(timet,t times Et,discretization);

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smoothEt = spline(timet,num(:,2),discretization);

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graph area = trapz(discretization, smoothEt);

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tmean = trapz(discretization,splineoutput t Et)/graph area

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variance = ((timet - tmean).2) .* num(:,2);

variance mean = ...
trapz(discretization,spline(timet,variance,discretization))/graph area

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figure(1)

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plot (discretization +25,smoothEt,'k-')

xlabel('time(mins)'),ylabel('Volume reactor dye * 105')
title('C curve')

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figure (2)
plot(discretization ,smoothEt,'b-')
xlabel('time(mins)'),ylabel('External age fraction')
title('E curve')

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% calculate the I values

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I = zeros(length(discretization),1);
for i = 2: length(discretization)
I(i) = (1/tmean)*(1 - trapz(discretization(1:i), smoothEt(1:i))/graph area);
end

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figure (3)
plot(discretization(2:end),I(2:end),'r-')
xlabel('time(mins)'),ylabel('internal age fraction')
title('I curve')
end