Evaluation of Mixing Characteristics of an Industrial Reactor by a Tracer-Response Technique

To evaluate the mixing characteristics of an industrial liquid-phase reactor, a tracer has been injected into the reactor, and the transient responses of the tracer concentration at the reactor outlet have been obtained. A mathematical model to simulate the responses has been constructed. The product of the reactor is fed to a vapor flash tank from which the liquid containing the tracer is recycled back to the reactor. The reactor is vertically cylindrical and slender and has been considered to lack sufficient mixing in the vertical direction. For this reason, the reactor agitator has been modified. The tracer tests have been made both before and after the modification. In this paper, a method of characterizing the vertical agitation parameters has been devised by which the effect of the agitator modification has been evaluated.