A stirred-tank heating system described by:

(1)

Is used to preheat a reactant containing a suspended solid catalyst at a constant flow rate of 1000 kg/h. The volume in the tank is 2m2, and the density and specific heat of the suspended mixture are, 900 kg/m3 and 1 cal/g C, respectively. The process initially is operating with inlet and outlet temperatures of 100 and 130 C. The following questions concerning process operations are posed: a) What is the heater input at the initial steady state and v alues of K and ?

b) If the heater input is suddenly increases by +30%, how long will it take for the tank temperature to achieve 99% of the final temperature change?

c) Assume the tank is at its initial steady state. If the inlet temperature is increased suddenly from 100 to 120 C, how long will it take before the outlet temperature changes from 130 to 135 C?

Solution a
First you must calculate the process steady-state operating conditions and then the gain and time constant in the equation (1) above.

Assume: -No heat loss -The energy input from the heater at the initial steady state is equal to the enthalpy increase between the inlet and outlet streams.

Steady-State Energy Balance: (2)

Using equation (1) above, the gain and time constants can be determined (the disturbance gain is unity):

Solution b
Response of a First-Order Process to a Step Input: t--->y(t)/KM=1-e^(-t/) 0--->0 --->0.6321 2--->0.8647 3--->0.9502 4--->0.9817 5--->0.9933

According to the table above, the time required to attain the 99% response following a step change of any magnitude in heater input will be 5 process time constants-that is, 9 hours.

The steady-state change in temperature due to a change of +30% in Q (9 x 10^6 cal/h) can be found from the Final Value Theorem, as shown below:

Please Note: we have calculated the outlet temperature chane as a result of the input change; hence, the outlet temperature at the final steady state will be 130 C +9 C=139 C. However, use of the Final Value Theorem is an unnecessary formality when a process transfer function is written in the standard form with gain and time constants. The input change need only be multiplied by the process gain to obtain the ultimate change in the process output, assu ming that the final value does in fact exist and is finite. In this case, T'(t->infinity)=K x (change in Q) =(10^-6 C/cal*h)(9 x 10^6 cal/h)= 9 C

Solution c
Because the gain of the appropriate transfer function (that relates T' to T'_i) is one, an input temperature change of 20 C causes an outlet temperature of 20 C.

The time required for the output to change by 5 C, or 25% of the ultimate steady-state change, can be calculated using the time domain response equation: