INTRODUCTION

In the majority of industrial chemical process, a reactor is the key item of

equipment in which raw materials undergo a chemical change to form
desired product. The design and operation of chemical reactors is thus
crucial to the whole success of the industrial operation.
Reactors can widely form, depending on the nature of the feed materials
and the products. Understanding non-steady behavior of process
equipment is necessary for design and operation of automatic control
systems. One particular type of process equipment is the continuous
stirred tank reactor. In this reactor, it is important to determine the
system response to a change in concentration. This response of
concentration versus time is an indication of the ideality of the system.
Reactors used for carrying out chemical or physical reactions can be
characterized as ideal or non ideal, according to the nature of the hydraulic
and mixing conditions. In contrast with non ideal reactor, ideal reactors are
assumed to have uniform mixing and hydraulic conditions, depending on the
specific reactor configurations. Common reactor configurations include plug
flow reactors (PFRs), completely mixed batch reactors (CMBRs) and
completely mixed flow reactors (CMFRs). In addition, a CMFR may also be
referred as a complete-mix reactor (CMR), continuous stirred tank reactor
(CSTR), constant flow stirred tank reactor (CFSTR), or back mix rector.
CSTR and PFR are probably the two most widely-accepted reactor regimes
used for water treatment or analysis plants such as settling tanks, activated
sludge reactor basins, aerated lagoons, oxidation ponds, and high-rate
anaerobic digesters (Reynolds and Richards 1996). Nevertheless, the choice
between PFR and CSTR would be made as a function of the desired
application. For example, in the mixing of coagulants, the intense mixing
provide by CSTRs is desirable to disperse the reactants quickly. Flocculation,
on the other hand, requires moderate agitation to increase the rate of
particles collision and formation of large aggregate particles, which can be
achieved by PFR regime. As for the disinfection process in water treatment, a
typical reactor may be a long, narrow channel, long pipe or tubular, or a
series of long channel, because it is typically carried out by the exposure
time to the disinfectant of interest for a specified duration of time.
Complete mixing in a CSTR reactor produces the tracer concentration
throughout the reactor to be the same as the effluent concentration. In other
words, in an ideal CSTR, at any travel time, the concentration down the
reactor is identical to the composition within the CSTR (Hoboken et al.,
2005). The consequence of this is that the shape of the tracer curve is
significantly different from that obtained with the PFR. For an impulse input,
the effluent concentration of the tracer instantly reaches a maximum as this
tracer is uniformly distributed throughout the CSTR. Then, this concentration

gradually dissipates in an exponential manner as the tracer leaves the

effluent. The shape of this tracer curve is exponential because, as the tracer
leaves the reactor, its concentration is reduced with the rate at which the
tracer mass leaves the reactor. It is important to notice that the chemical (so
called tracer) concentration at the retention time (RT) is quiet reduced in
comparison with the PFR model where the concentration is the same as the
input concentration.
Environmental engineering, it is already known that the hydraulic
performance of a reactor can be improved by increasing the number of
CSTRs in series. As a consequence and as a fact, treatment processes are
frequently staged to meet treatment objectives. Staged treatment processes
are currently analyzed as tank in series. It has already been demonstrated
that, for a same total reactor volume (VT) it is possible to approach the
performance of a PFR (in terms of retention time) by increasing the number
(n) of CSTRs in series (in this case each CSTR in the series has a volume of
VT/n).
We can see easily that the maximum concentration is approaching the
retention time (1) by increasing the number of CSTRs in the series. The
maximum concentration tends to increase with the number of CSTR which
corroborate the fact that the CSTR volume is negatively proportional to the
number of CSTR in the series.in this experiment, we need to determine the
eff ect residence time on the response curve. So we used Continuous
Stirred Tank Reactor in Series (model BP107) to achieve our
objective of the experiment. At the same time, we decided to make both
a mathematical prediction model and conduct a series of experiments. The
mathematical model will allow us to make a comparison between the
experimental data and the analytical model.

APPARATUS AND MATERIALS

Distillation water
Sodium Chloride
C o n t i n u o u s re a c t o r i n s e r i e s
Stirrer system
Feed tanks
Waste tank
Dead time coil
Computerize system
Stop watch

CSTR in series (model BP107)

REFERENCE
-

Levenspiel, O, Chemical Reaction Engineering, John Wiley, 1972

Robert H.Perry, Don W.Green, Perrys Chemical Engineers
Handbook, McGraw Hill,1998.
Smith,J.M, Chemical Engineering Kinetics, McGraw Hill, 1981.
Cholette, A., J. Blanchet, et al. (1960). "Performance of Flow Reactors at
Various Level of Mixing." The Canadian Journal Of Chemical
Engineering 38: 1-18.
Reynolds, T. D. and P. A. Richards (1996). Unit operations and
processes in environmental engineering. Boston, PWS Pub. Co.
Stamatelatou, E. (2009) Biotreatment of zinc-containing wastewater in
a sulfidogenic CSTR: Performance and artificial neural network (ANN)

modelling studies. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 164, 105-113.

Kotsopoulos, T.A., I. A. Fotidis,N. Tsolakis & G. G. Martzopioulos (2009)
Biohydrogen production from pig slurry in a CSTR reactor system with
mixed cultures under hyper-thermophilic temperature (70 degrees C).

Biomass & Bioenergy, 33, 1168-1174.

Von Sperling, M. (2002). "Relationship between first-order decay
coefficients in ponds, for plug flow, CSTR and dispersed flow regimes."

Water Science and Technology 45(1): 17-24.

Hill, C. G., An Introduction to Chemical Engineering Kinetics and
Reactor Design. New York : Wiley,1997, Chap. 8.
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics ( Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press,
2003).
N. H. Chen, Process Reactor Design (Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn
and Bacon, 1983), p. 26.

APPENDICES

Type of Reactor
Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR)

Characteristics
Run at steady state with contiuous flow
of reactants and product; the feed
assumes a uniform composition
throughout the reactor, exit stream has
the same composition as in the tank

Kinds of Phases
Present
1. Liquid phase
2. Gas-liquid

Usage
1. When

Advantages
1. Continuous

Disadvantages
1. Lowest

reaction
3. Solid-liquid
reaction

agitation is
required
2. Series
configuratio
n for
different
concentratio
n streams

operation
2. Good
temperature
control
3. Easily adapts
to two phase
runs
4. Good control
5. Simplicity of
construction

conversion
per unit
volume
2. By-passing
and
channeling
possible
with poor
agitation