Residence time
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A residence time is the average time a substance spends within a specified region of space, such as a reservoir. For example, the residence time of water stored in deep groundwater, as part of the water cycle, is about 10,000 years. A common method for determining residence times is to calculate how long it would take for a region of space to become filled with a substance.
In the designing of Chemical Reactors, the residence time is regarded as the average time for the processing of the feed in one reactor volume measured at specified conditions.It is also known as space time and is denoted by τ.
It is related to the volume and the volumetric flowrate υ in the mathematical relation
τ = V/υ
The τ is also related to space velocity s, which is the number of reactor volumes of feed treated per unit time at specified conditions.
Both space time and space velocity are adequate performance measures for the mixed flow reactor and the plug flow reactor.
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