bstract
All reactors in reality are not ideal plug flow reactor (PFR) or ideal continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR). They are difficult to differentiate. This study was to investigate the reactor analysis of PFR and CSTR through tracer response curves, residence time distributions (RTD) and several hydraulic performance indexes. We set up the differentiated value of each index. The tracer response curve showed that our labscale CSTR was close to ideal CSTR and got 99.9% recovery. In the RTD curves, the results could significantly rec ognize the PFR nature of high rate pond (HRP). With hydraulic performance indexes study, every selected index demonstrated that the studied HRP was closer to PFR than the studied CSTR. Based on the labscale study results, this study established the cutting point between the PFR and CSTR in each index; we were look ing through the different types of reactors in literature and we confirmed the criteria with all literature reactors with the “graphic method”. The method helped us to establish those important values to help us to differen tiate the reactor types in practice and to understand the designs better.
INTRODUCTION
High rate pond (HRP) was a remarkable design which was developed by W. Oswald in Richmond field station, U.C. Berkeley. Oswald tried to mimic the eco system mechanisms to optimize the reactor efficiency. Currently HRP has played a critical role for lots of applications in field especially on algae production, wastewater treatment, nutrition, food, pharmaceutical material, aquaculture, biotech, biofuel, etc.
CONCLUSIONS
It is very difficult to separate a reactor in reality between PFR and CSTR as we mentioned before. We cannot find any criteria except Metcalf and Eddy Inc.’s in literature which was for field only. This study discovered the true values of the five most popular reactor indexes to differentiate a reactor either in lab scale or in field scale: N = 1.8, λ = 0.5, P90/P10 = 18, Ve = 5.6%, d = 0.5 to help us to understand the reac tors better.
