ALPHA-OMEGA AND BEYOND INDUSTRIAL VIEW OF GAS-LIQUID SOLID REACTOR DEVELOPMENT

Gas/Liquid/Solid reactors may be the most difficult of all reacting systems to commercialize. Their development requires dealing with virtually all facets of reaction engineering and their underlying core chemical engineering technologies. Kinetics, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, mixing, thermal requirements, hardware design and economics intertwine within the confines of the reactor and in turn are impacted by ancillary requirements of the entire process system. Laboratory units rarely provide intrinsic kinetics; pilot plants exhibit unique hydrodynamics and mixing characteristics; and commercial units introduce further complexities of scale. This paper seeks to delineate fundamental development and scaleup issues, and to relate them through example to the requirements of gas/liquid/solid reactor R&D.