Preface

The man who has ceased to learn ought not to be allowed to wander around loose in these dangerous days.

M. M. Coady

To give a reference point as to the level of understanding of CRE required in the profession, a number of reaction engineering problems from the California Board of Registration for Civil and Professional Engineers—Chemical Engineering Examinations (PECEE) are included in the text.¹ Typically, these problems should each require approximately 30 minutes to solve.

¹ The permission for use of these problems—which, incidentally, may be obtained from the Documents Section, California Board of Registration for Civil and Professional Engineers—Chemical Engineering, 1004 6th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, is gratefully acknowledged. (Note: These problems have been copyrighted by the California Board of Registration and may not be reproduced without its permission.)

Finally, the companion Web site should greatly facilitate learning the fundamentals of CRE because it includes Summary Notes of the material in each chapter, PowerPoint slides of class lecture notes, additional examples, expanded derivations, and self-tests. A complete description of these learning resources is in Appendix I.

Figure P-2 shows the first building blocks of CRE and the primary algorithm that allows us to solve CRE problems through logic rather than memorization. We start with the Mole Balance Building Block (Chapter 1) and then place the other blocks one at a time on top of the others until we reach the Evaluate Block (Chapter 5), by which time we can solve a multitude of isothermal CRE problems. As we study each block we need to make sure we understand everything in that block and don’t leave anything out so we don’t wind up with a cylindrical block. A tower containing cylindrical blocks would be unstable and would fall apart as we study later chapters. See the end of Chapter 1 lecture notes on the CRE Web site to see the tower of CRE fall if you have blocks with rounded edges.

From these pillars and building blocks, we construct our CRE algorithm:

With a few restrictions, the contents of this book can be studied in virtually any order after students have mastered the first six chapters. A flow diagram showing the possible paths is shown in Figure P-3.

The reader will observe that although metric units are used primarily in this text (e.g., kmol/m³, J/mol), English units are also employed (e.g., lb_m/ft³, Btu). This choice is intentional! We believe that whereas most papers published today use the metric system, a significant amount of reaction engineering data exists in the older literature in English units. Because engineers will be faced with extracting information and reaction rate data from older literature as well as from the current literature, they should be equally at ease with both English and metric units.

There are notes in the margins, which are meant to serve two purposes. First, they act as guides or commentary as one reads through the material. Second, they identify key equations and relationships that are used to solve CRE problems.

The objectives of the Web site are fourfold:

(1) To facilitate the learning of CRE by using the companion Web site to actively address the Felder/Solomon Inventory of Learning Styles 7 discussed in Web Appendix I

(2) To provide additional technical material

(3) To provide tutorial information and self-assessment exercises

(4) To make the learning of CRE fun through the use of interactive games

The following sections (D.1 through D.4) are listed at the end of most chapters and can be accessed from each chapter in the companion Web site.²

² http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSdir/styles.htm

1. Summary Notes and PowerPoint Slides

The Summary Notes give an overview of each chapter and provide on-demand additional examples, derivations, and audio comments, as well as self-tests to assess each reader’s understanding of the material. Copies of the PowerPoint slides are available from this course taught at the University of Michigan as well as those from Professor Mary Kraft’s class at the University of Illinois.

2. What Entertainment Is on the Web Site?

2.A. YouTube Videos

We have included links to humorous YouTube Videos made by students in Professor Alan Lane’s 2008 chemical reaction engineering class at the University of Alabama, as well as videos from the University of Michigan 2011 class. Specifically, check out “The Black Widow Murder Mystery” (Chapter 3), “CRF Reactor,” and “Diet Coke and Mentos” (Chapter 4); learn a new dance and song (“CSTR” to the tune of “YMCA”); hear a rap song (“Find Your Rhythm,” an “Ice Ice Baby” remix (Chapter 5)); and watch University of Michigan videos, including the ever-popular chemical engineering classic, “Reaction Engineering Gone Wrong.”

2.B. Interactive Computer Games (ICGs)

Students have found the Interactive Computer Games to be both fun and extremely useful to review the important chapter concepts and then apply them to real problems in a unique and entertaining fashion. The following ICGs are available on the Web site:

• Quiz Show I (Ch. 1)

• Reactor Staging (Ch. 2)

• Quiz Show II (Ch. 4)

• Murder Mystery (Ch. 5)

• Tic Tac (Ch. 5)

• Ecology (Ch. 7)

• The Great Race (Ch. 8)

• Enzyme Man (Ch. 9)

• Catalysis (Ch. 10)

• Heat Effects I (Ch. 12)

• Heat Effects II (Ch. 12)

As you play these interactive games, you will be asked a number of questions related to the corresponding material in the textbook. The ICG keeps track of all the correct answers and at the end of the game displays a coded performance number that reflects how well you mastered the material in the text. Instructors have a manual to decode the performance number.

2.C. Web Modules

The Web Modules are a number of examples that apply key CRE concepts to both standard and nonstandard reaction engineering problems (e.g., glow sticks, the use of wetlands to degrade toxic chemicals, and pharmacokinetics of death from a cobra bite). The Web Modules can be loaded directly from the CRE Web site (http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/web_mod/index.html).

3. Solved Problems

A number of solved problems are presented along with problem-solving heuristics. Problem-solving strategies and additional worked example problems are available in the Problem Solving section of the CRE Web site.

1. Material from the fifth edition of Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering that is not included in the printed textbook.

2. Material that is important to the practicing engineer, such as details of the industrial reactor design for the oxidation of SO₂ and design of spherical reactors and other material that is typically not included in the majority of chemical reaction engineering courses but is included here.

The end-of-chapter problems numbered “2” (e.g., P3-2_A, P11-2_B) ask questions about the example problems in that chapter. These example problems are a key resource. These number-2-level problems should be worked before tackling the more challenging homework problems in a given chapter. The subscript letter (A, B, C, or D) after each problem number denotes the difficulty of the problem (i.e., A = easy; D = difficult).

AspenTech. AspenTech is a process flow sheet simulator used in most senior chemical engineering design courses. It is now routinely introduced in earlier chemical engineering courses, such as thermodynamics, separations, and now in CRE. See the AspenTech Web site (http://www.aspentech.com) for more information. Like Polymath, AspenTech site licenses are available in most chemical engineering departments in the United States. Four AspenTech simulation examples specific to CRE are provided on the CRE Web site with step-by-step tutorial screen shots.

As with Polymath programs, the input parameters in AspenTech can be varied to learn how they change the temperature and concentration profiles. Further details are given in Appendix D.

COMSOL Multiphysics. The COMSOL Multiphysics software is a partial differential equation solver that is used with Chapters 12 and 18 to view both axial and radial temperature and concentration profiles. For users of this text, COMSOL has provided a special Web site that includes a step-by-step tutorial, along with examples. See http://www.comsol.com/ecre. Further details are given in Appendix D.

Further details of these three software packages can be found in Appendix D.

Visual Encyclopedia of Equipment (http://encyclopedia.che.engin.umich.edu). This section was developed by Dr. Susan Montgomery at the University of Michigan. Here, a wealth of photographs and descriptions of real and ideal reactors are given. Students with visual, active, sensing, and intuitive learning styles of the Felder/Solomon Index will particularly benefit from this section.

Reactor Lab (http://www.ReactorLab.net). Developed by Professor Richard Herz at the University of California at San Diego, this interactive tool will allow students not only to test their comprehension of the CRE material, but also to explore different situations and combinations of reaction orders and types of reactions.

CRE Web Site. The CRE Web site (http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/index.html) will be used to update the text and identify typographical and other errors in the first and later printings of this text—available under Updates and FAQs on the CRE Web site home page. Additional material may also be added to include more solved problems, as well as additional Web Modules, which will also be found under Updates and FAQs.

³ R. W. Paul, Critical Thinking (Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1992).

TABLE P-2 SIX TYPES OF SOCRATIC QUESTIONS USED IN CRITICAL THINKING

It is important to know these six types and be able to apply them when investigating a problem such as “Is there a chance the reactor will run away and explode?” or “Why did the reactor explode?”

Critical thinking skills are like any skill, they must be practiced. Scheffer and Rubenfeld^4,5 describe how to practice critical thinking skills using the activities, statements, and questions shown in Table P-3. The reader should try to practice using some or all of these actions every day, as well as asking the critical thinking questions in Table P-1 and on the Web site.

⁴ Courtesy of B. K. Scheffer and M. G. Rubenfeld, “A Consensus Statement on Critical Thinking in Nursing,” Journal of Nursing Education, 39, 352–359 (2000).

⁵ Courtesy of B. K. Scheffer and M. G. Rubenfeld, “Critical Thinking: What Is It and How Do We Teach It?” Current Issues in Nursing (2001).

TABLE P-3 CRITICAL THINKING ACTIONS⁶

⁶ R. W. Paul, Critical Thinking (Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1992); B. K. Scheffer and M. G. Rubenfeld, “A Consensus Statement on Critical Thinking in Nursing,” Journal of Nursing Education, 39, 352–359 (2000).

I have found that the best way to develop and practice critical thinking skills is to use Tables P-2 and P-3 to help students write a question on any assigned homework problem and then to explain why the question involves critical thinking.

More information on critical thinking can be found on the CRE Web site in the section on Problem Solving (http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/probsolv/index.htm).

⁷ H. S. Fogler, S. E. LeBlanc, with B. Rizzo, Strategies for Creative Problem Solving, 3rd Ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2014).

TABLE P-4 PRACTICING CREATIVE THINKING

One of the major goals at the undergraduate level is to bring students to the point where they can solve complex reaction problems, such as multiple reactions with heat effects, and then ask “What if . . . ?” questions and look for optimum operating conditions and unsafe operating conditions. The solution to one problem exemplifies this goal: the Manufacture of Styrene (Chapter 12, Problem P12-26_C). This problem is particularly interesting because two reactions are endothermic and one is exothermic.

(1) Ethylbenzene Styrene + Hydrogen: Endothermic

(2) Ethylbenzene Benzene + Ethylene: Endothermic

(3) Ethylbenzene + Hydrogen Toluene + Methane: Exothermic

The student could get further practice in critical and creative thinking skills by adding any of the following exercises (x), (y), and (z) to any of the end-of-chapter homework problems.

(x) How could you make this problem easier? More difficult?

(y) Critique your answer by writing a critical thinking question.

(z) Describe two ways you could work this problem incorrectly.

To summarize, it is this author’s experience that both critical and creative thinking skills can be enhanced by using Tables P-2, P-3, and P-4 to extend any of the homework problems at the end of each chapter.

At the same time, this edition provides new resources that allow students to go beyond solving equations in order to get an intuitive feel and understanding of how reactors behave under different situations. This understanding is achieved through more than 80 interactive simulations (LEPs) provided on the Web site. The Web site has been greatly expanded to address the Felder/Solomon Inventory of Different Learning Styles⁸ through interactive Summary Notes and new and updated Interactive Computer Games (ICGs). For example, as discussed in Appendix I the Global Learner can get an overview of the chapter material from the Summary Notes; the Sequential Learner can use all the hot buttons; and the active learner can interact with the ICGs and use the hot buttons in the Summary Notes.

⁸ http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSdir/styles.htm

A new pedagogical concept is introduced in this text through expanded emphasis on the example problems. Here, the students simply load the Living Example Problems (LEPs) onto their computers and then explore the problems to obtain a deeper understanding of the implications and generalizations before working the homework problems for that chapter. This exploration helps students get an innate feel for reactor behavior and operation, as well as develop and practice their creative thinking skills.

To develop critical thinking skills, instructors can assign one of the new homework problems on troubleshooting, as well as ask the students to expand homework problems by asking a related question that involves critical thinking using Tables P-2 and P-3.

Creative thinking skills can be enhanced by exploring the example problems and asking “What if . . . ?” questions, by using one or more of the brainstorming exercises in Table P-4 to extend any of the homework problems, and by solving the open-ended problems. For example, in the case study on safety, students can use the LEP on the CRE Web site to carry out a postmortem analysis on the nitroaniline explosion in Example 13-2 to learn what would have happened if the cooling had failed for five minutes instead of ten minutes. To this end, a new feature in the text is an Analysis paragraph at the end of each example problem. Significant effort has been devoted to developing example and homework problems that foster critical and creative thinking.

1. Safety: Three industrial explosions are discussed and modeled.

a. Ammonium Nitrate CSTR Explosion (Chapters 12 and 13)

b. Nitroaniline Batch Reactor Runaway (Chapter 13)

c. T2 Laboratories Batch Reactor Runaway (Chapter 13)

d. Resources from SAChE and CCPS (Chapter 12)

2. Solar Energy: Three examples of solar energy conversion are discussed.

a. Solar Chemical Reactions (Chapter 3)

b. Solar Thermal Reactors (Chapter 8)

c. Solar Catalytic Water Splitting (Chapter 10)

3. Alternative Fuels:

a. Production of Algae for Biomass (Chapter 9)

4. AspenTech: An AspenTech tutorial for chemical reaction engineering and four example problems are provided on the CRE Web site. The example problems are

a. Production of Ethylene from Ethane

b. The Pyrolysis of Benzene

c. Adiabatic Liquid Phase Isomerization of Normal Butane

d. Adiabatic Production of Acetic Anhydride

However, all intensive laws tend often to have exceptions. Very important concepts take orderly, responsible statements. Virtually all laws intrinsically are natural thoughts. General observations become laws under experimentation.

First of all, I am indebted to Ame and Catherine Vennema, whose gift of an endowed chair greatly facilitated the completion of this project. My colleague Dr. Nihat Gürmen coauthored the original Web site during the writing of the fourth edition of this book. He has been a wonderful colleague to work with. I also would like to thank University of Michigan undergraduate students Arthur Shih, Maria Quigley, and Brendan Kirchner, who worked on earlier versions of the Web site. Their hard work and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Ben Griessmann was instrumental in making everything come together for the Web site for the fifth edition, including converting the fourth edition’s physical CD-ROM to online-only content for this new edition.

The many stimulating discussions on activation energy with Professor Michael Stamatakis in the Chemical Engineering Department at University College London are greatly appreciated. Michael B. Cutlip, coauthor of Polymath, not only gave suggestions and a critical reading of many sections, but also, most importantly, provided continuous support and encouragement throughout the course of this project. Professor Chau-Chyun Chen provided two AspenTech examples. Ed Fontes at COMSOL Mutiphysic not only provided encouragement, but also provided a COMSOL Web site containing a tutorial with CRE examples. Bernard Goodwin and Laura Lewin, editors at Prentice Hall, were extremely encouraging, helpful, and supportive throughout. Julie Nahil, full-service production manager at Prentice Hall, was fantastic throughout. She provided encouragement, attention to detail, and a great sense of humor, which were greatly appreciated. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) students Darshan Shah, Anamika Singh, and Sravya Jangareddy, along with Fan Zhang, a University of Michigan student, and Keyvan Edrisi from Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, not only participated in the preparation of the solutions manual, but along with Maithri Venkat worked on the Web site to place many of the LEPs in Wolfram. Richa Motwani from IIT Guwahati, and Gunish Handa and Prafful Bhansali from IIT Bombay, did an extraordinary job in proofreading the galley proofs of the manuscript and making helpful suggestions for changes as well as putting the solution manual in final form. Thank you to students Krittin Binabdullah, Apirak Hanpan, and Thanaphoom Khrutphisit from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, along with Ph.D. candidate Cláudio Vilas Bôas Fávero for help in meeting the final deadline for this manuscript.

I very much appreciated the patience of all my Ph.D. students during the period in which this book was written, Michael Senra, Zhenyu Huang, Michael Hoepfner, Nasim Haji Akbari Balou, Claudio Vilas Boas Favero, and Mark Sheng Zheng. Mark helped proofread a number of chapters of the page proofs; Professor Michael Senra class-tested the draft version of the fifth edition, and he and his students gave many valuable suggestions to this edition. There are others I would like to thank for a variety of different reasons: David Bogle, Lee Brown, Brice Carnahan, John Chen, Stu Churchill, Rane Curl, Jim Duderstadt, Tom Edgar, John Falconer, Rich Felder, Asterios Gavriilidis, Joe Goddard, Jay Jorgenson, Costas Kravaris, Steve LeBlanc, Joe Martin, Susan Montgomery, Max Peters, Phil Savage, Johannes Schwank, Mordechai Shacham, Klaus Timmerhaus, Ron West, Jim Wilkes, June Wispelwey, Max, Joe (aka “Jofo”), Sophia, Nicolas, and to the Starbucks staff at Plymouth Road Mall, where most of my final editing of this book was accomplished.

Laura Bracken is very much a part of this book. I appreciate her excellent deciphering of equations and scribbles, her organization, her discovery of mistakes and inconsistencies, and her attention to detail in working with the galleys and proofs. Through all this was her ever-present wonderful disposition. Thanks, Radar!!

Finally, to my wife Janet, love and thanks. Not only did she type the first edition of this book—on a Royal Select typewriter!—she also was a sounding board for so many things in this edition. She was always willing to help with the wording and sentence structure. For example, I often asked her, “Is this the correct phrase or word to use here?” or “Should I mention Jofostan here?” Jan also helped me learn that creativity also involves knowing what to leave out. Without her enormous help and support the project would never have been possible.

HSF
Ann Arbor, Michigan
November 2015

For updates and new and exciting applications, go to the Web site:

http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/index.html

For typographical errors, click on Updates & FAQ on the Home page to find

http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/updates/index.html