This problem requires you to combine your experience with calculations/unit conversions with reaction engineering.

This problem requires you to combine your experience with calculations/unit conversions with reaction engineering. You must determine the correct ratio to mix the feeds in order to achieve the desired equimolar flow rates of the reactants. (You do not have enough information about the streams to determine the total molar flow rate of the streams, just the molar flow rates of reactants within the streams). The composition of the overall feed will not be xA = xB = 0.5 because there is other inert stuff in the stream that we are not told about (probably water, but possibly some other inert stuff - consider anything except the specified reactants to be inert). What we do know is that FA/FB = 1. Hint: figure out how many moles of each reactant are in 100 g of each feed stream and use that to determine the relative ratios of the streams, and the mass flow of the mixed stream for a basis of a flow for one of the streams. It has been reported that the reaction

CH2OH CH2OH | + NaHCO3 Æ | + NaCl + CO2 CH2Cl CH2OH ethylene chlorhydrin ethylene glycol

is elementary with the rate constant k = 5.2 liter/mol-hr at 82o C. On the basis of this information we wish to construct a pilot plant to determine the economic feasibility of producing ethylene glycol from two available feeds, a 15 wt% aqueous solution of sodium bicarbonate and a 30 wt% aqueous solution of ethylene chlorhydrin. Assume all operations are at 82o C, where the specific gravity of the mixed reacting fluid is 1.02.

(a) What volume of tubular (plug flow) reactor will produce 20 kg/hr ethylene glycol in the product stream at 95% conversion of an equimolar feed produced by intimately mixing appropriate quantities of the two feed streams. (The molar flow rates of the reactants in the feed are to be equimolar, not the total molar flow

(b) What size mixed reactor is needed for the same feed, conversion and production rate as in part (a)?