Principles of Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design

Book excerpt: An innovative approach that helps students move from the classroom to professional practice This text offers a comprehensive, unified methodology to analyze and design chemical reactors, using a reaction-based design formulation rather than the common species-based design formulation. The book's acclaimed approach addresses the weaknesses of current pedagogy by giving readers the knowledge and tools needed to address the technical challenges they will face in practice. Principles of Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design prepares readers to design and operate real chemical reactors and to troubleshoot any technical problems that may arise. The text's unified methodology is applicable to both single and multiple chemical reactions, to all reactor configurations, and to all forms of rate expression. This text also . . . Describes reactor operations in terms of dimensionless design equations, generating dimensionless operating curves that depict the progress of individual chemical reactions, the composition of species, and the temperature. Combines all parameters that affect heat transfer into a single dimensionless number that can be estimated a priori. Accounts for all variations in the heat capacity of the reacting fluid. Develops a complete framework for economic-based optimization of reactor operations. Problems at the end of each chapter are categorized by their level of difficulty from one to four, giving readers the opportunity to test and develop their skills. Graduate and advanced undergraduate chemical engineering students will find that this text's unified approach better prepares them for professional practice by teaching them the actual skills needed to design and analyze chemical reactors.