THE ATTAINABLE REGION AND OPTIMAL REACTOR STRUCTURES

Given a system of reactions and associated kinetics and assuming only the processes of reaction and mixing, one may derive, for variables which obey linear mixing laws, geometrically based constructive necessary conditions. Using these necessary conditions, global optimization problems with algebraic objective functions of the basis variables may be solved generating both optimal reactor configurations as well as operating parameters. The technique is used to solve the well known three dimensional problems of van de Vusse, Denbigh and Westerterp. It is further shown in general for all dimensions that it would need to be a very unusual situation where the optimal reactor network was not a series-parallel arrangement of CSTR's, plug flow reactors and bypasses. © 1990.