Innovation in Chemical Reactor Engineering Practice and Science

Abstract

Chemical engineering industrial practice has always forged ahead of chemical engineering science to create new processes and products driven mostly by the pull of society's desire for improved quality of life. The resulting processes have often left room for advances in process systems engineering and in chemical engineering science to explain subtle aspects of the chemical technologies, thereby leading the way to systematic process improvement. As process improvements move along the learning curve it raises the question, “what is the best process that can be achieved, and how close is the current process to that best case?” For reaction systems, Horn formulated this question in 1964, and Feinberg & Ellison answered it in 2001. In this article we state the method for calculating the ultimate productivity of a given reaction system and associated chemical kinetics and apply it to a simple industrial chemical process to make ethyl acetate from renewable bioethanol feedstock. The benchmarks provided by the method lead to useful practical pathways for driving innovation.