Selection of Optimum Chemical Reactor Design

The program allows one to choose the best reactor setup among three alternatives: (1) a plug flow reactor with recycle, (2) a combination of a plug flow reactor and a stirred tank reactor in series and (3) two stirred tank reactors in series. This problem was solved graphically by O. Levenspiel in Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition, Wiley, 1999 (Example 6.3 page 144). In the present program, we show how one can accurately solve the same problem with the numerical and graphical capabilities of Matlab. We find similar results and conclusions as the ones given by Professor Levenspiel. In fact, it is configuration (2) that gives the smallest size of reactors.

A similar treatment using Mathematica can be found in the following link:

http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/5474