Consider the tubular reactor to saponify ethyl acetate with sodium hydroxide in Example 15.1.

(a) Assuming plug flow and perfect radial mixing, determine the length of the reactor to convert \(50 \%\) of the reactants.

(b) For the reactor in part (a), assuming fully developed laminar flow and no radial diffusion, what is the conversion of the reactants?

Data From Example 15.1:-

Figure 15.1:-

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For the liquid-phase saponification of ethyl acetate by sodium hydrox- ide in an aqueous solution to produce ethyl alcohol and sodium acetate: EtAc + NaOH EtOH + NaAc determines the reaction conversion in a straight tube assuming plug flow and perfect radial mixing of species and isothermal operation. A schematic of the tubular reactor is shown in Figure 15.1. The conditions are as follows: Feed at 0.05 mol/L of sodium hydroxide and 0.05 mol/L of ethyl acetate. Tube radius at 2 cm (0.7874 in). Temperature is 30C. Density of the reacting fluid (assumed to be pure water) is 996 kg/m and viscosity of the reacting fluid is 0.000798 Pa-s at 30C. Inlet volumetric flow rate of solution at 2 L/min (assumed to remain constant). Second-order irreversible reaction (first-order in each reactant) with rate constant, k = 8.9 L/mol-min at 30C. Note that these specifications are comparable to those of Seader and Southwick (1982). For a reactor volume of 1,977 cm (length of 157.3 cm), compute the conversion.