ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

ADDIS ABABA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

LABORATORY REPORT ON ADVANCED REACTION ENGINEERING

EXPERIMENT NAME:
RESIDENCE TIME DISTRIBUTION MEASURMENT IN CONTNOUS STIRRED
TANK RECATOR

INSTRUCTOR: DR ING: - NURELEGN TEFERA

DONE BY: TEMESGEN MATHEWOS

SHIMELIS KEBEDE
WONDESEN WORKNEH
YALEW WELDEAMMANUEL
 
 
 
 
 
 
1) OBJECTIVE OF THE EXPERIMENT:

To study the residence time distribution of a cascade of Continuous-flow

Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTRs) by means of a stimulus-response technique with
a tracer, and to compare the actual distribution of the tracer in the cascade
with the concentration pattern based on a theoretical model for the tracer
distribution. That means, to compare the actual residence time distribution of
a continuous-flow stirred tank to that of an ideal (perfectly mixed) tank.

2) THEORY:

A cascade of CSTRs is simply a series of CSTRs which are interconnected,

where the effluent of the first reactor becomes the influent of the next reactor,
and so on. The CSTRs in a cascade can all be of the same size or of different
sizes. These can be used to model a river, stream or a reach, in which the
compartmentalized stretches of the reach can be modeled by a CSTR. Similar
types of large-scale tracer studies are carried out in the monitoring of pollution
of rivers and streams that have widely varying cross-sections over very long
distances.
In the laboratory experiment, a series of equal-sized CSTRs will be studied by
means of the stimulus-response technique. The nature of the concentration
changes with time in each of the CSTRs will be evaluated.

The time the atoms have spent in the reactor is called the residence time and
the distribution of the various atoms coming out the reactor with respect to
time is called the residence time distribution. RTD can be determined
experimentally by injecting an inert chemical, molecule, or atom, called tracer,
into the reactor at some time t=0 and then measuring the tracer concentration
‘C’ in the exit stream as a function of time. Pulse and step inputs are the two
commonly used methods of injection.

Continuous-flow stirred are commonly used in chemical engineering practice

as reactors and mixing tanks. In most applications it is customary to assume
that the contents of the tank are perfectly mixed and that the composition of
the exit stream is identical to the composition of the bulk liquid in the tank at
any particular instant in time. The validity of this assumption is dependent
upon such items as tank geometry, location of inlet and outlet, and efficiency
of the tank agitator or impeller.
One technique for determining how close to ideality the tank operates is to
inject a pulse of a tracer into the tank, and then observe the concentration of
the tracer in the effluent with respect to time. Ideally, this tracer should be
injected into the feed stream while the flow is at the steady state condition.

If the tank is in fact well mixed, the relationship between tracer concentration
and time can be found from a material balance on the tracer in the tank over a
time period Δ t.

In an ideal CSTR (or mixed reactor), the contents are well-stirred and
uniform throughout; the exit stream has the same composition as the
fluid within the vessel. However, real reactors never fully follow these
ideal flow patterns. In this experiment, we will quantify the deviation of
the Armfield CSTR from ideality using the residence time distribution
(RTD) approach. To characterize the extent of the nonideal flow, the
system will be disturbed by quickly injecting a pulse of inert tracer
(sodium hydroxide) into the CSTR. Measurements of the tracer
concentration in the reactor effluent will then be obtained from the
conductivity readings recorded by the computer.

Assume that a mass N 0 of tracer is quickly dumped into a perfectly-mixed

vessel at time t = 0. Then a transient material balance on the tracer
component leads to:

d C (t )
V = − v C (t ), t > 0
dt
or
d C (t )
t = − C (t ) (1)
dt

where V is the volume of fluid in the reactor and v is the volumetric

flowrate. The symbol C (t ) refers to the concentration of tracer in the
reactor at time t. The mean residence time

V
t = (2)
v

represents the average length of time that a “batch” of fluid spends in the
vessel.
By solving the differential equation (1) with boundary condition C (0) ≡ C0
= N 0 / V , we obtain

⎛ t⎞
C (t ) = C0 exp ⎜ − ⎟ (3)
⎝ t⎠

The RTD or exit age distribution function is defined as

C (t )
E (t ) = (4)
Q
with
∞
Q ≡ ∫ C (t ) dt
0

It is apparent from Eqn. (4) that

∞

∫ E (t ) dt = 1
0

The fraction of fluid elements in the exit stream younger than t1 is

t1
∫ E (t ) dt
0

whereas the fraction of material older than t1 is

∞ t1
∫ E (t ) dt = 1 − ∫ E (t ) dt
t1 0

It can be shown that

∞
t = ∫ t E (t ) dt (5)
0

or
M
t ≈ ∑ ti E (ti ) Δ t (6)
i =1
 if the mean residence time is to be approximated from M measurements of
the tracer exit concentration collected at regular intervals of Δ t time
units.

Many types of models can be used to characterize nonideal flow within a

reactor. A popular choice is the “tanks-in-series” model, in which the
fluid is conceptualized as flowing through a series of equal-size ideal
stirred tanks. The single parameter is N, the number of tanks in the
chain. For such a process, it may be demonstrated that

t N −1 exp (− N t / t )
E (t ) = (7)
( N − 1)! ( t / N ) N

N can be estimated using

(t )2
N = (8)
σ2

where σ 2 denotes the variance of E (t ), i.e.

∞ ∞
σ2 = ∫ (t − t ) 2 E (t ) dt = ∫t
2
E (t ) dt − ( t ) 2
0 0
M
≈ ∑ ti2 E (ti ) Δ t − ( t ) 2
i =1

3) MATERIALS AND APPARATUS USED:

¾ Continuous stirred tank reactor in series

¾ Stop watch
¾ Computer
¾ Distilled Water
¾ NaOH
¾ Pippets
4) PROCEDURE

i) Turn on the power switch of the chemical reactor service unit. Turn on
the computer.
ii) Double-click the CSTR icon on the Windows desktop. Familiarize yourself
with the basic features of the Armsoft package, especially the mimic
diagram, graph and data table.
iii) If necessary, fill the reagent vessels with de-ionized water and set the feed
pumps and agitator for manual operation.
iv) Gradually increase the speed of feed pump by rotating the speed dial
clockwise until 45cm3/min.
v) Allow the water level in the CSTR to build until it reaches the top of the
standpipe and effluent starts flowing to drain.
vi) Select the “View Data in Graph Format” tab and trend “Run #1 Measured
Conductivity (mS)” on the primary y-axis. Return to the “View Diagram”
tab, left-click the “Configure” button and fix the sampling interval at 2
seconds. Click “OK” to close this dialog box then “Start Sample”.
vii) Make up 2 ml of tracer solution by dissolving approx. 4M of sodium
hydroxide pellets in de-ionized water.
viii) Fill a 2ml syringe with the tracer solution. Lower a piece of flexible tubing
through the conductivity gland until it nearly touches the bottom of the
reactor and insert the syringe. Quickly inject the solution and withdraw
the flexible tubing.
ix) Observe the conductivity readings as they are plotted in real time on the
computer.
x) When the measured conductivity has returned to its initial value (when
the conductivity values become steady), turn off the agitator and repeat
steps viii) and ix) with different flow rate (75cm3/min).
xi) When the experiment is complete, stop the data collection by clicking the
“Stop Sample” button. Save your results in Formula One and Excel
formats.
xii) Set all controls on the reactor service unit to minimum/off and turn off
the unit. Drain the contents of the CSTR.

5) DATA

We measured the conductivity Collected at 250c with stirrer speed at 52% for
45cm3/min and 75cm3/min hydroxide flow rate.
6) DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The data obtained was for two different hydroxide flow rate at 25oC.

Hence, it took a bit greater time 16min for the slower flow rate (45cm3/min)
than the higher flow rate (75cm3/min) which is 13min as we can see from the
data.

The mixing is fast with the higher flow rate as shown in the plot.

The graph was done by using excel for the data which is collected within 2 sec
variation by using computer interface.

In an ideal CSTR, the reactant concentration is uniform throughout the vessel,

while in a real stirred tank, the reactant concentration is relatively high at the
point where the feed enters and low in the stagnant regions that develop in
corners and behind baffles.

The deviations from ideal reactor conditions pose several problems in the
design and analysis of reactors.Short Circuiting or By-Pass – Reactant flows
into the tank through the inlet and then directly goes out through the outlet
without reacting if the inlet and outlet are close by or if there exists an easy
route between the two.

As we can see from the plot there is three points. These are because of the
mixing until distribution of the tracer becomes uniform. Otherwise the result
that we obtained is very good and similar with the theoretical expected one.