Multicomponent Tubular Reactor with Isothermal Cooling

Application ID: 20481


This application uses the Chemical Reaction Engineering Module to study an elementary, exothermic, irreversible reaction in a tubular reactor (liquid phase, laminar flow regime). To keep its temperature down, the reactor uses a cooling jacket with a constant coolant temperature. The steady-state behavior of the reactor is investigated.

The application visualizes how the Chemistry and Transport of Diluted Species interfaces, as available with the Chemical Reaction Engineering Module, can be used for simple modeling and investigation of complex reaction kinetics and multicomponent mass transfer.

The setup here can be compared to the Tubular Reactor with Nonisothermal Cooling application using the COMSOL Multiphysics base package that does not have the in-built multicomponent reaction kinetics and mass transport formulations.

This model solves the example by S. Fogler in Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering 4th ed., (Prentice Hall, 2005), p. 557 (Example 8-12 Radial Effects in Tubular Reactor)

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: