Automated thermal design of reactor for producing sulfur-containing sorbent in heating reaction mixture

The article highlights the problem of automation the thermal design of a reactor for the synthesis of a sulfur-containing sorbent obtained from the use of waste products of epichlorohydrin, chlorinated lignin and sodium polysulfides is considered. Automated design helps to reduce the intensity of the process, improve the quality of design decisions, significantly reduce production costs, which has a positive effect on the cost of finished products. It has been found that due to the incompatibility of the similarity criteria of chemical and mass transfer processes there is little possibility to carry out a large-scale transition in a reactor based on physical similarity. In the course of a large-scale transition from a laboratory unit to a small production unit there were used the computational methods based on engineering experience that allow increasing the reliability of the results obtained. There have been determined the initial values, which will be used in the design for a reactor with a propeller agitator to mix a working mass having a dynamic viscosity coefficient of 6.01 sP and a solid phase content of 31.8%. The agitator type was determined by calculating the physical properties of the ingredients and selecting the mixer designs. A flowchart and a formal description of the algorithm for calculating heat transfer during a reaction mixture heating are given; the program interface is written in C# displaying the results of thermal design of the working mixture heating. As a result of the calculation, there has been calculated the amount of heat and time required to heat the working mixture, coefficient of heat transfer from the working mass to the reactor wall, mass flow rate of water and its costs, velocity of water in the thermal jacket, mode of water flow in the jacket and other similarity criteria.