Page 56 - Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering Ebook

Chap. 1 Questions and Problems 27

Sales
Company (billions of dollars)
1. Dow 19,73
2. Dupont 18.43
3. Exxon 11.73
4. Hoechst Celanese 7.39
5. Monsanto 7.25
6. General Electric 6.63
7. Mobil 6.15
8. Union Carbide 5.89
9. Amoco 5.66
10. Occidental Petroleum 5.41

What 10 companies were tops in sales for the year just ended? Did any
significant chinges occur compared to the 1995 statistics?
Why do you think H2S04 is the most produced chemical? What are some
of its uses?
What- is the current annual production rate (lb/yr) of ethylene, ethylene
oxide, and benzene?
Why do you suspect there are so few organic chemicals in the top lo?
P1-9* Referring to the text material and the additional references on commercial
reactors given at the end of this chapter, fill in the following table:

/.-
Kinds of
Type of Phases
Reactor Characteristics Present Use Advantages Disadvantages
-
- -___ -

P1-10, Schematic diagrams of the Los Angeles basin are shown in Figure P1-10. The
basin floor covers approximately 700 square miles (2 X 10lo ft2) and is almost
completely surrounded by mountain ranges. If one assumes an inversion
height in the basin of 2000 ft, the corresponding volume of air in the basin is
4 X IOi3 ft3. We shall use this system volume to model the accumulation and
depletion of air pollutants. As a very rough first approximation, we shall treat
the Los Angeles basin as a well-mixed container (analogous to a CSTR) in
which there are no spatial variations in pollutant concentrations. Consider
only the pollutant carbon monoxide and assume that the source of CO is from
automobile exhaust and that, on the average, there are 400,000 cars operating
in the basin at any one time. Each car gives off roughly 3000 standard cubic
feet of exhaust each hour containing 2 mol % carbon monoxide.