Endothermic Reaction in a Heated Batch Reactor

Consider an irreversible endothermic reaction () in a batch reactor heated by a steam jacket at temperature surrounding the reactor. The jacket heat transfer area and coefficient are and . The reactor volume is . The reaction rate constant is given by , with the activation energy and the universal gas constant . The initial concentration of is and is the initial molar ratio. The initial reactor temperature is 30°C. The mass and energy balances are

,

,

with ,

where is the conversion, is the reactor temperature, is the heat of reaction at 273.15 K, is the initial molar amount of , is the reaction rate, and and are the heat capacities of species and , respectively.

This Demonstration plots the conversion and temperature versus time for values of the steam temperature in the jacket, , and the initial molar ratio, .