In this work, a graphical method of identifying opportunities for improving the production rate from batch reactors is presented. On the basis of this approach, a modification to the standard procedure of batch operation is also developed. It is found that by modifying the initial concentration of the batch, overall production performance may be improved. This may be achieved in practice by retaining a fraction of the final product volume and mixing with fresh feed material for the next batch cycle. This result is counterintuitive to the normal method of batch operation. Arguments demonstrating how the graphical method may be used to gain insight into alternative methods of operation are also briefly discussed. As such, the bypassing of feed may also be used to improve production rate for exit concentrations not associated with the optimal concentration. The graphical approach also allows optimization of batches where only experimental data are given. The method is demonstrated through several industrial examples and is successfully shown to improve over the standard method of batch operation.

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An improved method of candidate attainable region (AR) construction, based on an existing bounding hyperplanes approach, is presented. The method uses a plane rotation about existing extreme points, rather than a plane translation, to eliminate unachievable regions from an initial bounding set. The algorithm is shown to be faster, but has currently only been implemented for two-dimensional constructions and has been extended to include the construction of candidate ARs that involve nonisothermal kinetics in concentration and concentration−time space.

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