Talk:Continuous stirred-tank reactor

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 February 2020 and 8 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jnewman12. Peer reviewers: Evanpmlester.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Edit from Rickproser

18:42, 5 October 2009 Rickproser (talk | contribs) (4,625 bytes) (added context of environmental engineering) (undo)

I'm moved his edit here to explain why I changed it. I put my comments below each bullet point. With this info already included, it is redundant and has been removed. If any of this does need to be included, let's discuss it. BeastRHIT (talk) 05:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

In environmental engineering, a continuous or continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR) is a system that has the following properties:

   * there is inflow and outflow of matter 
   - Continuous implies material is moving in and out, as compared to a batch process.
   * chemical reactions occur within the system's boundary
   - Common assumption for all mass balances.
   * the accumulation rate of any substance
   - I'm not sure what this mean?
   * the system is in a steady-state i.e. the concentration of any substance remains constant or equivalently, the accumulation rate is zero
   - Steady state is mentioned in the assumptions.
   * any substance on the system is assumed to be homogeneously distributed
   - Stated in the assumptions.

With the above assumptions the law of conservation of mass can be written in the generic form:

accumulation rate = 0 = input rate - output rate + reaction rate[2]

Misunderstanding of "continuous"

There is occasionally a misunderstanding of the word "continuous". The misunderstanding appears to be most common in environmental/civil engineering, as above, where the correspondent suggests that it might relate to a "continuously stirred" tank — presumably in contrast to a tank without continuous stirring! But no reason to make such a contrast exists.
The intended contrast is actually between

• a tank into/from which material continuously flows
• a tank into/from which no material flows — i.e. a batch reactor.

To clarify this point, it is common among chemical engineers to refer to a continuous-flow stirred-tank reactor (CFSTR). In fact this would be a better name for everybody to use, and so perhaps a better name for this article on WP too; but for now I've just added this as an 'alternative' into the article, supported by two references from academic websites. —DIV (120.18.91.48 (talk) 11:10, 13 October 2018 (UTC))

Bibliography for editing article

I will be editing this article as part of an environmental engineering course assignment. Below is a growing list of academic sources I will be using to edit this article. Any additional sources you recommend or suggestions for improving this article are greatly appreciated!

• Mark M. Benjamin and Desmond F. Lawler. (2013). Water Quality Engineering Physical/Chemical Treatment Processes.
• George Tchobanoglous, et al. (2014). Wastewater Engineering: Treatment and Resource Recovery, 5th Ed.

Jnewman12 (talk) 16:56, 10 March 2020 (UTC)