Continuous Stirred-Tank Reactor That Loses Cooling
Continuous Stirred-Tank Reactor That Loses Cooling
The exothermic reaction takes place in a continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) with a cooling jacket. The reactor runs at steady state when the cooling fails at six minutes. After a few minutes, the chemical engineer notices that the reactor temperature is increasing because of the cooling failure. In order to prevent the reactor temperature from getting too high, should the engineer increase or decrease the feed flow rate? What happens to the conversion when the feed flow rate is changed? The time at which the flow rate is changed is also adjustable. The dashed line represents what happens if the flow rate is not changed. The solid blue line represents the behavior if the flow rate is essentially instantaneously changed to a new value.
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