Strategy of an Attainable Region Partition for Reactor Network Synthesis

This paper presents a strategy of an attainable region partition for the synthesis of reactor networks. According to the definitions of objective function selectivity, instantaneous selectivity, and single yield, two concentration trajectory equations are developed under two extreme cases of continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) and differential side-stream reactor (DSR) by means of their geometrical characters and those of reaction and mixing in concentration space for the Van de Vusse reaction scheme. The two equations may be regarded as the optimization criterion of maximum selectivity for the reactor system. The concept of the maximum selectivity curve is presented by extending the feed of the reactor system from pure component to arbitrary concentration. The two-dimensional concentration space is divided into three regions (CSTR region, plug-flow reactor region, and non-operation region) by the curves of maximum selectivity and maximum single yield. The property of the maximum selectivity curve is d...