Simple Approach to Designing Safe and Productive Operation of Homogeneous Semibatch Reactors Involving Autocatalytic Reactions

In the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries, design of the safe and productive operating conditions for isoperibolic semibatch reactors(SBRs) involving exothermic autocatalytic reactions is an essential topic. Since determination of the detailed kinetic parameters is a time-consuming process, development of kinetic-parameter-free approach for the above purpose is greatly desirable. In this work, an insight into the desirable QFS (Quick onset, Fair conversion and Smooth temperature profile) operations in isoperibolic SBRs involving autocatalytic reactions is first provided. Then by comparing the thermal performances of SBRs involving autocatalytic reactions in both isothermal and isoperibolic mode, we found that if the MTSR increases with the reaction temperature in isothermal SBRs, the corresponding isoperibolic SBRs with initial temperature equal to the reaction temperature of the isothermal SBRs must be in the QFS region. On the basis of this finding, a facile approach with no requirement of the information on the kinetic parameters is developed to design safe and productive operating conditions for isoperibolic SBRs involving exothermic autocatalytic reactions.