The concepts of chemical reaction engineering are powerful, because the most basic design equations are applicable to a wide range of physical phenomena. For example, the applicability of the ideal continuous-flow stirred tank reactor goes far beyond chemical reactors to include biological, medical and environmental processes. The difficulty in analyzing these processes is not in formulating an appropriate reactor equation, but in modeling the chemical kinetics. The challenge is to define kinetic rate equations that allow for the mixtures of reactants and mixtures of catalysts, especially given incomplete information. Examples drawn from biology and medicine illustrate reaction kinetics that are complex due to the nature of the catalyst.In contrast, processes for upgrading of bitumen to more valuable products exhibit ill-defined reaction chemistry and mixtures of thousands of reactants and products. The need to define kinetics for such mixtures has given rise to several distinct approaches, including empirical rate equations, simplification to model reactions, lumped kinetics and Monte Carlo simulation. A summary of these methods shows that the key element for successful kinetic modeling is creative definition of a model, followed by vigorous testing of the model to determine its ability to predict performance. chemical and chemical processes illustrate that the practice of kinetics inevitably involves dealing with complex mixtures, complex catalysts, or both simultaneously. The art in the practice of chemical kinetics lies in balancing the need for fundamental understanding of the variables that influence the reactions, on the one hand, with the need to get the job done to support the overall work of development of chemical processes.
Objective of chemical reaction engineeringChemical kinetics is only one component of the larger field of chemical reaction engineering, which seeks to design reactors for safe and efficient manufacture of products of desired purity. Large-scale manufacturing favors continuous or semi-continuous operation over batch processes; therefore, the core intellectual discipline of chemical reaction engineering is the analysis of chemical reactions in open systems, where mass enters and leaves the reactor vessel simultaneous to the chemical transformation. This discipline is unique to the education and practice of chemical engineers, who can also use this approach to make a unique contribution wherever reactions occur in open systems, ranging from medicine and biology to the environment.