Reactor is a process vessel in which raw materials are added and reaction can be conducted. There are different type of reactors use in different type of industries like pharmaceutical industries, color and dyes industries, petro chemical industries, fine chemical industries and many more.
The reactors, in which chemicals are made in industry, vary in size from a few cm3 to the vast structures that are often depicted in photographs of industrial plants. For example, kilns that produce lime from limestone may be over 25 metres high and hold, at any one time, well over 400 tonnes of materials.
A batch reactor is the simplest type of reactor vessels use for chemical or industrial processes. A typical batch reactor consists of a tank where chemical reactions occur. These tanks also have an agitator and an internal heating or cooling system. Tank sizes range from one liter to 15,000 liters.
The plug flow reactor model (PFR, sometimes called continuous tubular reactor, CTR) is normally the name given to a model used in chemical engineering to describe chemical reactions in continuous, flowing systems of cylindrical geometry.
Semibatch reactors operate much like batch reactors in that they take place in a single stirred tank with similar equipment. However, they are modified to allow reactant addition and/or product removal in time