CHE3164 - Reaction engineering - 2017

6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

Undergraduate - Unit




Organisational Unit

Department of Chemical Engineering


Professor Sankar Bhattacharya (Clayton)

Dr Chai Siang Piao (Malaysia)

Unit guides



  • Second semester 2017 (Day)


  • Second semester 2017 (Day)


This unit aims to develop a fundamental understanding of chemical reaction kinetics and reactor design, including:

  1. fundamentals of design of ideal reactors
  2. rate laws, collection and analysis of rate data, stoichiometry
  3. isothermal reactor design
  4. multiple reactions, reaction mechanisms and pathways
  5. an introduction to bio-reaction engineering
  6. non-isothermal reactor design
  7. catalysis and catalytic reactors.


At the successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

  1. Appreciate the importance of chemical kinetics and reactor design in chemical industry.
  2. Apply the fundamentals of chemical kinetics for complicated reactions.
  3. Apply the fundamentals of kinetics of catalytic reactions, including some biochemical reactions.
  4. Describe the fundamentals of reactor design.
  5. Apply advanced mathematics to complicated problems of reactor design.
  6. Analyse the behaviour of complicated reactors.
  7. Apply the fundamental principles of reaction engineering to a wide range of problems, e.g. in traditional petrochemical and chemical industry, in pharmaceutical industry, in energy industry, in environmental protection.
  8. Analyse new reaction engineering problems and formulating original solutions.


Assignments/Tests/Laboratory: 40% + Final Examination (2 hours): 60%


Workload requirements

3 hours of lectures, 2 hours of tutorials and 6 hours of private study per week, plus two 4-hour laboratory experiments and associated reporting during the semester.

See also Unit timetable information

Chief examiner(s)



CHE3101, CHE4102