Chemical reaction engineering (reaction engineering or reactor engineering) is a specialty in chemical engineering

Chemical engineering

Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...

 or industrial chemistry dealing with chemical reactor

Chemical reactor

In chemical engineering, chemical reactors are vessels designed to contain chemical reactions. The design of a chemical reactor deals with multiple aspects of chemical engineering. Chemical engineers design reactors to maximize net present value for the given reaction...

s. Frequently the term relates specifically to catalytic reaction systems where either a homogeneous

Homogeneous catalysis

In chemistry, homogeneous catalysis is a sequence of reactions that involve a catalyst in the same phase as the reactants. Most commonly, a homogeneous catalyst is codissolved in a solvent with the reactants.-Acid catalysis:...

 or heterogeneous

Heterogeneous catalysis

In chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis refers to the form of catalysis where the phase of the catalyst differs from that of the reactants. Phase here refers not only to solid, liquid, vs gas, but also immiscible liquids, e.g. oil and water. The great majority of practical heterogeneous catalysts...

 catalyst is present in the reactor. Sometimes a reactor per se is not present by itself, but rather is integrated into a process

Chemical process

In a "scientific" sense, a chemical process is a method or means of somehow changing one or more chemicals or chemical compounds. Such a chemical process can occur by itself or be caused by somebody. Such a chemical process commonly involves a chemical reaction of some sort...

, for example in reactive separations vessels, retort

Retort

In a chemistry laboratory, a retort is a glassware device used for distillation or dry distillation of substances. It consists of a spherical vessel with a long downward-pointing neck. The liquid to be distilled is placed in the vessel and heated...

s, certain fuel cell

Fuel cell

A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used...

s, and photocatalytic surfaces.

Origin of Chemical Reaction Engineering

Chemical reaction engineering as a discipline started in the early 1950s under the impulse of researchers at the Shell Amsterdam research center and the university of Delft. The term chemical reaction engineering was apparently coined by J.C. Vlugter while preparing the 1st European Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering which was held in Amsterdam in 1957.

Discipline

Chemical reaction engineering aims at studying and optimizing chemical reaction

Chemical reaction

A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...

s in order to define the best reactor

Chemical reactor

In chemical engineering, chemical reactors are vessels designed to contain chemical reactions. The design of a chemical reactor deals with multiple aspects of chemical engineering. Chemical engineers design reactors to maximize net present value for the given reaction...

 design. Hence, the interactions of flow phenomena, mass transfer

Mass transfer

Mass transfer is the net movement of mass from one location, usually meaning a stream, phase, fraction or component, to another. Mass transfer occurs in many processes, such as absorption, evaporation, adsorption, drying, precipitation, membrane filtration, and distillation. Mass transfer is used...

, heat transfer

Heat transfer

Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the exchange of thermal energy from one physical system to another. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as heat conduction, convection, thermal radiation, and phase-change transfer...

, and reaction kinetics are of prime importance in order to relate reactor performance to feed composition and operating conditions. Although originally applied to the petroleum

Petroleum industry

The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting , and marketing petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline...

 and petrochemical

Petrochemical

Petrochemicals are chemical products derived from petroleum. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sources such as corn or sugar cane....

 industries, its general methodology combining reaction chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 and chemical engineering

Chemical engineering

Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...

concepts allows to optimize a variety of systems where modeling or engineering of reactions is needed. Chemical reaction engineering approaches are indeed tailored for the development of new processes and the improvement of existing technologies.

A few Chemical Reaction Engineering books

• Chemical Reaction Engineering (3rd Edition), Octave Levenspiel, 1999, John Wiley & Sons
• Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering (4th Edition), H. Scott Fogler, 2005, Prentice Hall
• Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design (2nd Edition), Gilbert F. Froment and Kenneth B. Bischoff, 1990, John Wiley & Sons
• Fundamentals of Chemical Reaction Engineering (1st Edition), Mark E. Davis and Robert J. Davis, 2003, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Chemical Reaction Engineering symposia

The most important series of symposia are the International Symposia on Chemical Reaction Engineering or ISCRE conferences. These three-day conferences are held every two years, rotating among sites in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, on a six-year cycle.