Dynamics of Reaction Separation Processes in the Limit of Chemical Equilibrium

A new approach for analyzing and understanding the dynamics of combined reaction separation processes with fast chemical reactions was proposed recently. The approach is based on transformed concentration variables which were first introduced by Doherty and co-workers for the steady-state design of reactive distillation processes. Application was demonstrated for reactive distillation processes and fixed bed, as well as moving-bed chromatographic reactors. The focus was on simple reactions of type 2A ⇌ B + C. This approach is further extended and applied to some real fairly complex multireaction systems. Applications to be considered are a reactive enantiomeric separation process in a fixed-bed chromatographic reactor, and an industrial reactive distillation column. Finally, application to membrane reactors is discussed. Copyright © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) [accessed 2014 January 8th