Interaction between chemical reactions and mixing on various scales

Abstract

The way in which reagents are mixed can have a large influence on the product distribution of a chemical reaction. This has been analysed earlier when micromixing is the limiting mixing step. Additional segregation at a larger scale has only been treated in detail when the local turbulent dispersion of a feed stream was relevant. Here additional segregation due to the finite disintegration rate of large concentration eddies is represented by a feasible structure to describe the environment within which micromixing and chemical reaction take place. The resulting model contains one time constant each for micro- and mesomixing. Their estimation is discussed and applied to predicting the yields of fast complex reactions in plug-flow static mixers and in a semibatch stirred tank reactor under conditions where neither macromixing nor turbulent dispersion were limiting. The comparison with measured yields is good for micromixing and fairly satisfactory for inertial-convective mesomixing. Further research on this step is needed.