0.

0.5

0.4
Conversion XNaOH

y = -0.0879x + 0.589
0.3 R² = 0.7305

0.2

0.1

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Residence time (min)

The graph above shows the relationship of the conversion of NaOH with respect to residence time.
Space time is the time required to process one reactor volume of feed while residence time is the time
required for one material to flow in the reactor. For a constant density system, the space time τ is equal to
the residence time 𝑡̅ and is related to volume of the reactor in the equation below.

𝑉𝑃𝐹𝑅
𝜏 = 𝑡̅ =
∅𝑉,𝑖𝑛
The graph above shows that the conversion of NaOH decreases as residence time increase. However,
theoretically, this should not be the case. A conversion only occurs when molecules collide to react as stated
by the collision model (Zumdahl & Zumdahl, 2012). Increasing residence time allows more possible collisions,
therefore it is expected that, as the residence time of a material in a reactor increases, the conversion of a
reactant increases. This could also be supported by the characteristic equation of a plug flow reactor below.

𝐶𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻 𝑋𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻
𝑑𝐶𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻 𝑑𝑋𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻
𝜏 = 𝑡̅ = − ∫ =∫
𝐶𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻 ,𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡 −𝑟𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻 0 −𝑟𝑁𝑎𝑂𝐻

From the equation, it can be seen that the residence time is proportional to the conversion of the reactant.
This also suggest that increasing the time of one material or processing of one reactor volume of feed
should increase the conversion. In addition to this, it should also be expected that the conversion increases
with residence time until such time that the conversion a reaches maximum and plateaus.