2012 Spring Meeting & 8th Global Congress on Process Safety

(149c) Scaling Batch and Semi-Batch Processes From Laboratory to Plant

Author

Worstell, J. H. - Presenter, Worstell and Worstell, Consultants


The heart of any chemical process is the reactor.  The most common reactor types are batch and semi-batch.  The efficiency of both reactor types depends upon agitation; i.e., mixing.  Thus, successfully scaling batch and semi-batch reactors depends upon mixing.  A plethora of mixing correlations exist; unfortunately, hardly any two batch or semi-batch reactors are geometrically similar enough for such correlations to work well.

This paper advocates using mass transfer coefficients as a means for scaling batch and semi-batch reactors from laboratory to plant.