Reactors

Without chemical reactions and reactors, we would only have a very limited number of processes we could use in chemical engineering.

This page provides some interactive tools focused on reactions and reactors to help understand the basis of these systems. It should not be taken as a complete resource as it will not go into full details for each system (nor cover all systems), but you should be able to gain that information from the courses you are taking.

Have a look at the interactive graphs below:

Series Reactions

Examine how the concentration of components varies with time for a pair of series reactions.

Parallel Reactions

Examine how the concentration of components varies with time for a pair of parallel reactions.

Levenspiel Plot

Examine the effect of the conversion on the reactor volume for a plugflow reactor and a continously stirred tank reactor.

Ergun Equation

Examine how the pressure varies through a packed bed length with change in the bed and fluid properties.

External Mass Transfer

Examine how the reaction rate with external mass transfer varies with the particle properties for a first order reaction.

Thiele Modulus

Examine the effect of the Thiele Modulus on the local concentration within a pore.

Langmuir Isotherm

Examine the effect the temperature, heats of adsorption, and the pressure on competing surface adsorption.

Fluidisation Velocity

Examine the effect of the particle size, density and viscosity on the minimum fluidisation velocity.

Fluidised Bed Reactor

Examine the effect of the particle size, velocity, and reaction rate on the design of a fluidised bed reactor.

Stirred Tank Reactors

Examine the effect of scaling up a stirred tank reactor on one design parameter to the other design parameters.