Residence Time Calculator

Defining Residence Time

One of the fundamental differences between traditional batch chemistry, and continuous flow chemistry is the residence time (RT). The residence time is the time that your reaction mixture spends within the reactor.

The slower you pump reagents through a reactor, the longer they spend within the reactor and therefore the longer the residence time. Understanding the residence time of your chemical process within a flow reactor allows you to calculate the potential throughput that can be achieved once the system is running at steady-state.

ATR Residence Time Calculator

The working reactor volume of the Coflore ATR can be altered through changing the ATR reactor tube volume (either 0.35 L or 1.25 L) and the number of ATR reactor tubes in total on the platform (between 1 and 8).

Use the residence time calculator below to easily work out the reaction mixture throughput for a Coflore ATR depending on the size and quantities of ATR reactor tubes, and the residence time of your chemical process.

ATR Pump Flowrate Calculator

The desired residence time calculator below allows you to calculate the pump flowrates required to achieve a desired reaction residence time in the Coflore ATR. Remember - if you are feeding in multiple reagents at different points (i.e. reagent 1 at ATR tube 1, reagent 2 at ATR tube 2), then the working reactor volume for the purpose of calculating your required reaction residence time will be the number of ATR tubes downstream of the final reagent addition point.

Residence Time Distribution

Residence time distribution (RTD) is the probability distribution function that a solid or fluid element will exit a continuous flow system, used as a measure of plug flow. Residence time distribution is often displayed on a bell-shaped curve, with a narrow curve indicating better resistance time uniformity across all of the molecules within a flow reactor. A narrow residence time distribution is essential for process uniformity and is one of the key requirements of any flow reactor.

Our Coflore systems are continuously testing and evaluating to generate technical content and case studies to demonstrate their versatility and modularity. The Coflore ACR, ATR and RTR systems have all had several investigations to determine the residence time distributions with respect to variables such as residence time and agitation frequency. Our blog article, Residence Time Distribution Across Coflore Systems, takes a deeper look into the RTD testing undertaken for each of our Coflore systems, check out the blog to learn more.