An Educational Laboratory Experimental System for Teaching Chemical Reaction Process Dynamics and Control

摘要

Chemical processes are governed by reaction rates that convert one set of chemical species into others. While these reactions are at the heart of all chemical engineering industrial processes, it is surprising that there are few laboratory experiments that introduce students to the time-domain evolution of chemical reactions. The vast majority of commercially available process dynamics and control educational equipment encountered by undergraduate chemical engineering students considers the dynamics of heat and mass transport. Students are able to study the time rate of change of temperature in a process, or the rate of flow in a process, but not the rate of reaction. This paper presents the concept and the design for an inexpensive experimental apparatus that makes the dynamic study of chemical reactions accessible to any undergraduate chemical engineer. The proposed laboratory system allows for an easy connection between the theoretical differential equations used to model such a system and the actual behavior observed experimentally. The experiment uses opacity of a liquid solution as a surrogate for chemical concentration of a reactant thereby allowing a change in concentration to be relatively easily transduced with a light source and photodetector.