Diseño y Construcción de un Reactor de Flujo en Pistón

Abstract

A piston flow reactor was designed and built at laboratory scale, where the students of the Chemical Engineering School will practice in the Chemical Reactions Engineering course, strengthening the theory with the experimental part. The equipment built consists of 304 stainless steel due to its anticorrosive properties, the body of the reactor is arranged in a helicoidal shape and it has a transparent PVC hose that allows observing the reaction along the reactor, the reagents were propelled towards the reactor using a direct current centrifugal pump, it has bronze accessories that are ideal to avoid losses during the operation and it has 2L plastic containers resistant to the reagents used. To demonstrate its operation, sodium acetate and ethanol were obtained using 0.038M sodium hydroxide and 0.038M ethyl acetate. Through the investigation, the parameters found in the literature and determined experimentally, it was decided that the ideal conditions for the best operation of the reactor are: a temperature of 21o C, and a constant pressure that is exerting the pump with a feed flow of 7.32 ???? 10-4 ????3 of each reagent, in a time of 47.57s that produces the reaction throughout the reactor. A conversion of 21% and a final concentration of 0.029M was obtained, thus demonstrating the efficiency of the equipment, and proving the theoretical part with the experimental one. In order to extend the useful life of the equipment, it is recommended to read the instructions in the operation manual attached to this research.