Essentials of Chemical Reaction Engineering, 2nd Edition

3. Rate Laws

Success is measured not so much by the position one has reached in life, as by the obstacles one has overcome while trying to succeed.

—Booker T. Washington

Overview. In Chapter 2, we showed that if we knew the rate of reaction as a function of conversion, −r_A = f(X), we could calculate reactor volumes necessary to achieve a specified conversion for flow systems and the time to achieve a given conversion in a batch system. Unfortunately, one is seldom, if ever, given −r_A = f(X) directly from raw data. Not to fear, in the next two chapters we will show how to obtain the rate of reaction as a function of conversion. This relationship between reaction rate and conversion will be obtained in two steps.

• In Step 1, described in this ...