A recycle
reactor is a reactor that is not seen very often, but is very important to consider when studying immobilized enzymes. It is very important to chemical engineering because it allows some substrates to be processed, which could not be processed using other reactor types. An example of a recycle reactor can be seen below:
In a recycle reactor, a portion of the product stream is recycled and mixed with the inlet flow to the reactor. If the entire product stream is recycled back to the inlet stream, then it is called a total recycle reactor. This can obviously only be used in a batch process, because if the entire product stream is recycled back into the reactor in a continuous reactor, the volume of the reactor would increase to infinity. Therefore, we will only consider partial recycle streams in a continuous reactor on this page.
This type of rector is used when you have a substrate that cannot be completely processed on a single pass, such as with an insoluble substrate. These reactors continue to move the same substrate through the reactor so that the effective contact time is high enough to allow the substrate to be processed. Recycle reactors also allow the reactor to operate at high fluid velocities. This is important because it minimizes the bulk mass transfer resistance to the transport of the substrate. It is important to remember that a recycle reactor is simply a reactor, such as a CSTR or fluidized-bed reactor, with a recycle stream.
To see these other types of reactors click on BACK.