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426
May, 1945 INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY 427
vessels for ease in cleaning and preventing contamination of suc- material to be handled, and over-all duty requirements of the
ceeding batches. agitator. Only when all of these factors are unknown at the time
Figure 2 shows a self-supporting unit with counterbalance ar- of designing the pilot plant is it necessary to make provision for
rangement so that position of vessel can be changed if desired. trying out a wide variety of impellers.
Space has been gained in the vessel head by using a nozzle at- It is suggested as important that the complete pilot plant for
tached at an angle instead of the customary normal entry. any unit process include, wherever possible, actual equipment
The design details shown in Figures 1 and 2 can, of course, be representing each unit operation essential in the unit process it-
combined in a n over-all design which would utilize structural steel self. If a pilot plant is to produce complete.results, both as to
cage support, swing joints, and flexible tubing so that the head the chemical reactions involved ahd as to a study of the mechani-
may remain fixed while the vessel is lowered. The support of the cal equipment and factors involved, greater attention must be
vessel should be at the most comfortable height for the most placed on the mechanical equipment than appears to be common
difficult function involved, including the operations of loading, practice. For example, many times pumps are omitted from a
draining, cleaning, temperature measuring, sampling, and visual pilot plant because the quantities handled are small enough to be
observation. transferred by buckets or by gravity. Consequently, no informa-
Figure 3 shows a complete assembly for handling materials tion is available for the engineers who design the commercial
similar to paste, greases, etc. Provision for raising and lowering siae plant.
the mixing head is built into the equipment, and extreme flexi- It has also happened that mechanical methods for a unit opera-
bility is obtained by interchanging mixing elements. Speed is tion are used in pilot plant work which are incapable of scaling
apparently vaned by changing flat belt pulleys. I n connection up to commercial size. For example, a rocking tank producing
with handling paste, greases, eto., the choice of the mixing ele- agitation by shaking can hardly be scaled up beyond a relatively
ments themselves is very critical. A piece of equipment, as illus- small batch size, owing to the massive equipment that would be
trated, is extremely valuable to anyone experimenting in the involved.
paste range of materials. In fluid mixing, however, the type of The authors do not suggest complete standardisation of that
impeller is not critical, the choice most frequently being made on a portion of the pilot plant involving agitation. They do believe,
mechanical limitations basis. Therefore, in fluid mixing it is however, that the factors presented here are important i n unit
generally possible to equip the pilot plant with only a single process pilot plant design, and it is hoped that these factors will
type of impeller, provided this impeller type is capable of being provide a general guide for those approaching such problems.
scaled up to the largest anticipated commercial size, and provided
the pilot plant is designed to develop the optimum conditions LITERATURE CITED
for the impeller through proper selection of size, variable speed, (1) Cooper, C . M., Fernstrom, G . A., and Miller, S. A., IND.EN@.
and other factors noted above. CHEM.,36, 504-9 (1944).
A single type or, at most, two types of impellers can be selected (2) Gibson, A. H., “Hydraulics and Its Application”, 4th ed., 1930.
(3) Miller, F. D., and Rushton, J. H., IND.ENQ.CRBM.,36, 499
Q I ~the basis of final commercial size, physical characteristics of (1944).
HE oxidation of ferrous sulfate solutions by atmoepheric Industrial studies of this reaction were made by Reedy and
oxygen has been studied considerably by analytical chem- Machin (8) who state that the initial concentration of ferrous sul-
ists, who have expressed surprise at the slowness of the re- fate makes little difference in the velocity of the reaction. They
action (6). They report a variety of conflicting results, probably secured complete oxidation by circulating the solution five times
arising from the differences in experimental methods. I n a physi- over crushed pyrolusite. Posnjak ( 7 ) determined the hours re-
Gal-chemical study of the activation of the oxygen electrode, quired for oxidation of 0.1 and 0.5 N ferrous sulfate solutions at
Lamb and Elder (6) studied a number of variables in this reaction room temperature. Agde and Schimmel ( I )
and corrected many of the erroneous conclusions of earlier work- bubbled air or oxygen through ferrous sul-
ers. I n general, they determined the hours required for a n oxida- fate solutions at various temperatures a n d ’
tion of 1% of the ferrous ion a t 30” C. Their results will be com- pressures.
pared with those obtained in this work. As discussed by previous workers (7, 8),
The factors controlling the oxidation of the ferrous iron in a solution OF ferrous sulfate, ferric sulfate, and sulfuric
acid have been studied, using both oxygen and air. The percentage oxidation of ferrous sulfate is shown
here graphically on curves with respect to time, partial press!re of oxygen, temperature, acid concentration, and catalyst
concentration. The oxidation OF ferrous sulFate in acid solution by oxygen is a very difficult reaction, and good
conversions to ferric sulfate occur only at quite high temperatures and pressures over a considerable time period.