REACTOR MODELS FOR A SERIES OF CONTINUOUS STIRRED TANK REACTORS WITH A GAS-LIQUID-SOLID LEACHING SYSTEM .1. SURFACE-REACTION CONTROL

In this three-part series of articles, comprehensive three-phase steady-state hydrometallurgical reactor models of the continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) type are developed and applied to a commercial (pressure oxidation) process. The key features of the developed models are the coupling of both mass and heat balance equations, the description of the nonisothermal performance (autothermal) of a multistage continuous reactor, and the treatment of multimineral feed materials. The model considers only the oxidation reactions, because they mainly affect the thermal balance of the reactor. The stoichiometries and intrinsic kinetics of the heterogeneous leaching reactions, which are established via independent experiments, are the foundation of the developed model. A three-phase (g-l-s) reaction process might be controlled by either surface reaction control, i.e., the rate(s) of the heterogeneous leaching reaction(s), or by gas transfer control, i.e., the rate of transfer of the gaseous reactant into the liquid phase. In the present article (Part I), the case of surface reaction control is treated. The article addresses, in particular, the following topics: (1) it outlines the basic mass and heat balance equations which describe the performance of a multistage leaching reactor; (2) it presents a continuous function to describe the particle size distribution of the feed; and (3) it develops, on the basis of probability theory, number- and mass-particle size density functions which give the size distribution of particle populations reacting according to the surface reaction control-shrinking core model.