High temperature combustion reactor

Abstract

One of the possible ways to accelerate chemical processes is to transfer them into a high temperature regime by using combustion reactors. Such reactors can be divided into two limiting types: ideally stirred reactors and displacement reactors. The first type is characterized by its infinitely high rate of mixing of the fresh reactive mixture with combustion products. At such a high mixing rate uniform temperature and concentration fields in the reactor volume are formed. Accordingly, the completeness of combustion, as well as the process temperature, do not depend on the thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the carrier fluid and are completely determined by the conditions at the reactor inlet and by the intensity of any external heat transfer. In contrast, in the second case (displacement reactors) the rate of mixing of the initial reactants with the final products is negligible. The latter results in the existence of non-uniform temperature and concentration distributions in the reactor volume and in the dependence of process characteristics on the heat and mass transfer between the regions filled with cold reactive mixture and high temperature combustion products.