Utility for Operation 1: Reaction 1

For support on this exercise, email support@scale-up.com.

Estimate heat transfer and safe addition time for kilo lab vessel
During this exercise you will:
 Use the Estimate UA utility to get an estimate of the heat transfer coefficient (UA) in a vessel filled to 30 L
working volume, based on standard engineering correlations
 Evaluate the source of the biggest resistance to heat transfer
 Estimate the minimum safe addition time when running Reaction 1 in this vessel.

Tip: This utility can be used to estimate the heat transfer coefficient in situations where solvent test information is
unavailable. It can also be used to get an estimate of the relative contributions of each resistance to heat transfer
(even if UA is already known), i.e. to determine what limits heat transfer.

Step 1 – Open the utility

Download the starting template [estimate_UA_DB.xls] from DynoChem Resources (listed as Heat transfer UA).
Alternatively, locate this file by searching for “estimate UA”.
Click the link to download the Excel workbook. It will open on a worksheet called geometry with schematics of
two vessels at the top of the page.
Tip: Two vessels are shown because you will often want to scale-up or scale-down and therefore compare two
vessels side by side.
Save the utility under a new name in an appropriate folder, e.g. on your desktop.

Step 2 – Specify vessel geometry and impellers

In this project, we are only interested in the heat transfer performance of the larger scale (30 L) vessel.

Enter the following information for the scale-up vessel (30 L in CR60) on the geometry worksheet. Use Vessel 2
(right-hand side) for your inputs.

Vessel name CR60 (select from dropdown list)

Volume of liquid added 30 liters
Impeller speed 90 rpm

Review the vessel configuration as read from the vessel database, in the drawing and the reminder of the
geometry sheet.

Can the selected vessel accommodate easily the volume of liquid added?

Step 3 – Specify fluids, materials of construction, jacket information and further

operating conditions
Use the Results worksheet (Vessel 2 section on right hand side) to input the following additional information for
the plant vessel’s operating conditions:

Copyright © 2013, Scale-up Systems Limited 1 3 December 2013

 Process side fluid Methanol, 35 C

Details of the jacket configuration are read from the vessel database and appear in rows 78 to 95 of the results tab.
Questions:
 What is the UA value in the scale-up vessel? [see row 18]
 What are the main limiting heat transfer resistances in the plant vessel? [see the bar chart under the main
results table]
 What operating conditions could you change at plant scale to improve heat transfer?
o Click the Add to Report button (located at the top of the worksheet) and then try out some
ideas. Press Add to Report for each calculation. Then go to the Vessel 2 Rep tab to see the
results tabulated in columns. This format is useful for adding to your project report, e.g. in a
Word document.

Step 4 – Run a heat balance calculation to estimate safe addition time

Go to the Heat balance tab, where you can run a heat balance calculation to estimate the minimum safe addition
time in a fed batch reaction, assuming rapid kinetics / dosing-controlled behaviour.
Minimum safe addition time in this tool is the addition time that would allow all of the heat evolved during the
addition to be removed, thereby giving an approximately constant temperature. This is of course an
approximation to reality, but is often useful as a guideline for deciding addition times.
In our project, scale-up to 30 L will mean reacting up to 34 mol of sulfuric acid with up to 28 moles of substrate.
Change the following values in the Vessel 2 column of the Heat balance tab:
Moles reactant A (added) 34
Moles reactant B (in bulk) 28
Reaction exotherm 48 kJ/mol
Jacket temperature 30 C
UA (taken from your Results tab)

You should find that the minimum safe addition time under these conditions is about 40 minutes.
The UA obtained in this exercise will be useful in building a dynamic model to predict temperature profiles on
scale-up in more detail. This is part of a separate modeling exercise in this project.
Optional: If you’d like to check your current model against our solution model for this part of the exercise, you can
download the solution here. [Estimate_UA_1.xls]

Copyright © 2013, Scale-up Systems Limited 2 3 December 2013