Using Mathcad to facilitate the design of chemical reactors involving multiple reactions

Abstract

The pedagogy of teaching chemical reaction engineering is continually advancing through the use of new computational tools and, therefore, the integration of these new tools into the Chemical Engineering degree is challenging. This paper reports an educational experience dealing with the use of Mathcad software to complement and to facilitate the design of chemical reactors involving multiple reaction. A continuous stirred tank reactor taking place series reactions and two reactors (continuous stirred tank reactor or plug flow reactor) arranged in series involving parallel reactions were presented as case studies. This experience, which was carried out with the third-year chemical engineering students enrolled in the Chemical Reactors course, revealed that Mathcad facilitates the understanding of the theoretical concepts related to multiple reactions and also reduces the complexity of mathematical calculation to a minimum. Thus, the use of this computer tool allows the teacher: (1) to delve deeper into more issues related to the design of chemical reactors, and (2) to consider this tool perfectly useful for other courses corresponding to the Chemical Engineering degree.