Scribd
Upload
143 views

Unsw Sydney School of Chemical Engineering Sample Paper Ceic 2005 Chemical Reaction Engineering

The document is a sample exam paper for a Chemical Reaction Engineering course. It contains 6 questions testing various concepts related to chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and reactor design. The exam is closed book, lasts 2 hours, and contains both short answer and multi-part quantitative questions worth a total of 100 marks. Calculators are permitted but answers must be written in ink.

Uploaded by

Joshua John
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
143 views

Unsw Sydney School of Chemical Engineering Sample Paper Ceic 2005 Chemical Reaction Engineering

The document is a sample exam paper for a Chemical Reaction Engineering course. It contains 6 questions testing various concepts related to chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and reactor design. The exam is closed book, lasts 2 hours, and contains both short answer and multi-part quantitative questions worth a total of 100 marks. Calculators are permitted but answers must be written in ink.

Uploaded by

Joshua John
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 6

UNSW SYDNEY

SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

SAMPLE PAPER

CEIC 2005 CHEMICAL REACTION ENGINEERING

1. TIME ALLOWED: 2 hours

2. READING TIME: 10 minutes

3: THIS EXAMINATION PAPER HAS 6 PAGES, INCLUDING COVER


SHEET

4. TOTAL NUMBER OF QUESTIONS: 6 [SIX]

5. TOTAL MARKS AVAILABLE: 100

6. MARKS AVAILABLE FOR EACH QUESTION ARE SHOWN IN THE


EXAMINATION PAPER

7. ALL ANSWERS MUST BE WRITTEN IN INK. EXCEPT WHERE


THEY ARE EXPRESSLY REQUIRED, PENCILS MAY BE USED
ONLY FOR DRAWING, SKETCHING OR GRAPHICAL WORK

8. THIS PAPER MAY NOT BE RETAINED BY CANDIDATE

SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS

9. EXAM IS CLOSED BOOK

10. CANDIDATES MAY USE OWN CALCULATORS


QUESTION 1 [15 MARKS]

{From Analytica Chimica Acta (1993) 283, 429} Glucose oxidase (GOx) is an
important biological enzyme used for determining the extent of fermentation,
glucose indexing of food, as well as glucose levels in blood and serum, a
valuable test method for diabetes screening. You studied the enzymatic
reaction of GOx with glucose at a pH of 7.0 and a GOx concentration of 44
mg/L. You determined the turnover number (kb) to be 0.0270 mol/mg/s and
the efficiency 2.235 L/mg/s. Calculate:

a) vmax
b) Km (the Michaelis-Menten constant)
c) The rate of reaction when a patient is hypoglycemic (typically,
glucose levels below 5 mmol/L, so use a glucose concentration of
2.5 mmol/L)

QUESTION 2 [10 MARKS]

Radiometric dating of the Earth relies on measuring the amount of uranium-


238 (238U) to the amount of lead-206 (206Pb), the stable isotope at the end of
the decay chain. The decay of 238U to its first radioactive isotope is the
slowest step, and used for the total age dating. Knowing that a 1 gram
sample of 238U has an activity of 1.2449×104 Bq, determine the age of the
Earth from a rock sample you have which contains 49.4% 238U and 50.6%
206
Pb.
QUESTION 3 [25 MARKS]

A gas phase reaction of sulfur dioxide and oxygen generates sulfuric


anhydride (a.k.a. sulfur trioxide). Given the following standard enthalpies and
entropies (at 25 °C):

Hf° (kJ mol-1) S°m (J mol-1 K-1)


SO2 -296.83 248.1
O2 reference state 205.03
SO3 -395.7 256.6

Calculate:

(a) Gibbs free energy of reaction at 25 °C.


(b) The reaction equilibrium constant at this temperature.
(c) The ratio of the forward to reverse pre-exponential factors, A and A′.
(d) The equilibrium constant when the temperature is increased to 700 K,
assuming that Hr° and Sr° are constant over this temperature range.

[Note: R = 8.314 J∙m o-1l∙K-1]


QUESTION 4 [10 MARKS]

The kinetics a reaction are captured in the Levenspiel plot below. The reaction
will be performed in a CSTR followed by a PFR.

(a) What conversion will be achieved in the CSTR if it has a volume of 6.6
kL?

(b) What volume PFR is required to then give an overall conversion of 80%?
QUESTION 5 [20 MARKS]

A polymerisation reaction is being undertaken in a microreactor that


comprises a mixing element followed by a tubular reactor. The tubular reactor
is 1.0 mm in diameter, 30 cm long and is irradiated by UV light to initiate
polymerisation with a photoinitiator. The polymerisation is found to follow a
pseudo-first-order rate law for the consumption of monomer (M):

where k′ = 4.70 × 10-2 L/mol/s at 25°C. The incoming monomer concentration


is 2.0 mol/L and volumetric flow rate of monomer is 0.25 mL/min. The reactor
is found to behave like an ideal PFR.

(a) Draw and label a diagram to help solve the material balance in this
reactor.

(b) Calculate the space-time of the reactor; hence, calculate the conversion
of the polymerisation reaction.

It is proposed to replace the tubular reactor with a 2.0 mm diameter pipe while
keeping the same tube length and flow rate.

(c) What conversion will be achieved with this new reactor?

Rather than changing the tubing to achieve a greater output, it is instead


proposed to operate several reactors in parallel, each identical to the original
reactor. To achieve its production targets, the microplant will need react
monomer at a rate of 0.054 mol/min.

(d) How many parallel microreactors will be required to achieve this target?
QUESTION 6 [20 MARKS]

An impulse of a tracer is injected into a tubular reactor. The residence time of


the reactor is 12 min.

(a) Assume the reactor behaves as an ideal plug flow reactor. Sketch a
graph showing the tracer concentration as a function of position along
the tubular reactor 1 minute after the tracer was injected. Additionally,
sketch the same graph for 5 and 10 minutes after the tracer is injected.
Clearly label the axes and the important features of each of the three
graphs.

(b) Assume instead that the flow in the reactor has a small amount of axial
dispersion. Prepare three more sketch graphs showing the tracer
concentration as a function of position along the tubular reactor 1, 5 and
10 minutes after the tracer was injected. Clearly label the axes and the
important features of each graph.

A second tubular reactor is also studied with same technique. The RTD from
this analysis is shown below. The first moment for this distribution is 10.1 min
and the second moment is 80.9 min 2. The total volumetric flow rate is 700 L/h
and the Péclet number is 1.1.

(c) Calculate the apparent volume of the reactor.

(d) It is known that the volume inside the tubular reactor is actually 200 L.
What can be inferred about this reactor from the Péclet number and the
volume calculated in Part (c)?

You might also like