Set up information

The feed to the reactor consists of two streams: One equivolumetric mixture of propylene oxide and methanol and one stream of water containing 0.1 wt % sulfuric acid. The water is fed at a volumetric rate 2.5 times larger than the propylene oxide-methanol feed. The molar flow rate of propylene oxide fed to the tubular reactor is 0.1 mol/s.

The water-propylene oxide-methanol mixture undergoes a slight decrease in volume upon mixing (approximately 3%), but this decrease has been neglected in these calculations.

There is an immediate temperature rise upon mixing the two feed streams caused by the heat of mixing. In these calculations this temperature rise is already accounted for and the inlet temperature of both streams is set to 312 K.

Furosawa et al. state that under conditions similar to these in this example, the reaction is first-order in propylene oxide concentration and apparent zero-order in excess of water with the specific reaction rate:

                (1/h)

    Where E = 75362.4 J/mol

                A = 16.96E12 hr^-1

The reaction rate is expressed by:

The thermal conductivity of the reaction mixture and the diffusivity is set to 0.599 (W/Km) and 1×10^–9 respectively, and is assumed to be constant throughout the reactor. In the case where there is a heat exchange between the reactor and its surroundings, the overall heat-transfer coefficient is 1300 (W/Km²) and the temperature of the cooling jacket is assumed to be constant and is set to 273K.

Physical data