Continuous adiabatic industrial benzene nitration with mixed acid at a pilot plant scale

In the range of operating conditions tested, it was shown that the prevailing reaction regime is the intermediate one (0.3 < Ha < 2). The film model used to predict the mononitrobenzene production according to the intermediate regime achieved a good accuracy. The asymptotic solutions for the fast and slow reaction regimes were compared with the full solution model and it was clearly shown that the last led to improved results. Since the film model is a simple approach to describe the mass transfer with simultaneous chemical reaction, the results achieved confirmed the adequacy of this modelling approach.