Introduction

The chemical reactor is the heart of most industrial processes, although the reactor may represent only about 10 percent of the total capital cost; this is because the output from the reactor defines everything else that must be done downstream, particularly the separation processes. Similarly, if we wish to think about cellular rather than industrial processes, it is the chemical reactions that enable the cell or the organ to carry out its essential functions. We saw in Chapters 7 through 9 how a chemical reactor is integrated into simple processes, and we explored economic issues such as the trade-off between capital and operating costs. That discussion was limited, however, because we assumed in every case that the rate constants were fixed numbers. In doing so, we ignored one of the “handles” that the chemical engineer – or, in the case of an organism, evolution – has available to promote efficiency. Chemical reaction rates are highly temperature dependent, and precise temperature control can be critical in both the design and functioning of a reactor.

Chemical reaction engineering is a broad subject, and it typically occupies at least one full course in an undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. We introduce some basic ideas here for completeness, but we are only touching on one of the foundations of the chemical engineering profession. We restrict ourselves throughout this chapter to liquid systems, as before, in order to simplify some of the analysis while retaining the essential features, and we address only well-mixed reactor configurations.