The Chemical Reactor from Laboratory to Industrial Plant

This graduate textbook, written by a former lecturer, addresses industrial chemical reaction topics, focusing on the commercial-scale exploitation of chemical reactions. It introduces students to the concepts behind the successful design and operation of chemical reactors, with an emphasis on qualitative arguments, simple design methods, graphical procedures, and frequent comparison of capabilities of the major reactor types. It starts by discussing simple ideas before moving on to more advanced concepts with the support of numerous case studies.

Many simple and advanced exercises are present in each chapter and the detailed MATLAB code for their solution is available to the reader as supplementary material on Springer website. It is written for MSc chemical engineering students and novice researchers working in industrial laboratories.

Prof. Santacesaria obtained his Chemistry Degree at the University of Pavia in 1966 with a Thesis developed under the guidance of the Nobel Prize Giulio Natta. He has worked as a researcher at the SNAM Progetti Co. in 1967. Then, he obtained a fellowship at the Polytechnic of Milano where he worked until 1970 in collaboration with Prof. Luigi Giuffrè, eminent analytical chemist pupil of Prof. Natta. In 1970 he became a researcher of the CNR (National Council of Research) always working in the Polytechnic of Milano until 1986 in collaboration with Prof. Sergio Carrà. In this period he developed researches on the following fields: chemistry of propellants, catalysis, kinetics, reactors design and simulation, separation science. In 1986 he winned the chair of Industrial Chemistry of the Science Faculty of the University of Naples “FEDERICO II”. He continued the research in almost all the mentioned research themes. Santacesaria had been the National Coordinator of the researches on “Colloid, Interface and Surfactants” in the National Program of Research “Progetto Finalizzato Chimica Fine” I and II (10 years) giving a great contribution to the improvement of the research efforts in these fields. He had been the founder of GICI the Italian Group of Colloid and Interface Science of the Italian Chemical Society and he had been the Coordinator of this Group for more than ten years (1985–1995). He is member of the Italian Chemical Society SCI, of the Italian Association of Chemical Engineers (AIDIC), of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and of the International Association of Colloids and Interphase (IACIS) and of the IUPAC. He had been the organizer of many national and international Congresses, workshops and postdoctoral schools. He had been a member of the Scientific Committee of the Industrial Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society for 10 years. He was elected President of the Industrial Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society for the period 2004–2006, renowned for the period 2007–2009 and then member of the Council as Past President in 2010–2012. He had been President of the Council of the Industrial Chemistry Degree Course from 1994 until 2009. He collaborated with many Italian and foreign chemical industries. He has published more than 250 papers on qualified journals and is a coauthor of more than 30 Patents. In 2011 he was awarded from Italian Chemical Society with the Gold Medal entitled to the italian chemist “Emanuele Paternò” for the great contributions given to the development of Industrial Chemistry.In 2016 was awarded from the Italian Group of Catalysis of the Italian Chemical Society with the “Giacom Fauser” silver plaque giving the related Conference. After the retirement from the University of Naples, at the end of 2012, he became CEO of the spin-off company Eurochem Engineering Ltd located in Milano (Italy).

Prof. Riccardo Tesser obtained his Industrial Chemistry Degree at the University of Naples “Federico II” in 1989 with a Thesis on multicomponent vapour-liquid equilibrium under the supervision of Prof. Santacesaria. He worked, from 1991 to 1999 at Montefibre Research Centre of Acerra (Naples). In 2000 he become an Assistant Professor in Industrial Chemistry at the University of Naples “Federico II” where he joined the Department of Chemical Sciences working in the research group of Prof. Santacesaria. From 2014 he became Associate Professor of Industrial Chemistry at the University of Naples.

His main field of research is Industrial Chemistry, especially industrial catalysis and kinetic studies of complex reactions in multi-phase reactors and related mathematical modelling. More recently, his main field of activity has been in biofuels production and the use of renewable resources as raw materials for chemical industry. The results of these scientific activities have been published in 120 papers in a wide range of international, peer reviewed, chemistry journals, 18 italianpatents, 11 international patents and 135 contributions to national and international meetings.