bed reactor. Chemical reactions occurring in a reactor may be exothermic, meaning giving off heat, or endothermic, meaning absorbing heat. A tank reactor may have a cooling or heating jacket or cooling or heating coils (tubes) wrapped around the outside of its vessel wall to cool down or heat up the contents, while tubular reactors can be designed like heat exchangers if the reaction is strongly exothermic, or like furnaces if the reaction is strongly endothermic. Types Batch reactor The simplest type of reactor is a batch reactor. Materials are loaded into a batch reactor, and the reaction proceeds with time. A batch reactor does not reach a steady state, and control of temperature, pressure and volume is often necessary. Many batch reactors therefore have ports for sensors and material input and output. Batch reactors are typically used in small-scale production and reactions with biological materials, such as in brewing, pulping, and production of enzymes. One example of a batch reactor is a pressure reactor. CSTR (continuous stirred-tank reactor) In a CSTR, one or more fluid reagents are introduced into a tank reactor which is typically stirred with an impeller to ensure proper mixing of the reagents while the reactor effluent is removed. Dividing the volume of the tank by the average volumetric flow rate through the tank gives the space time, or the time required to process one reactor volume of fluid. Using chemical kinetics, the reaction's expected percent completion can be calculated. Some important aspects of the CSTR: At steady-state, the mass flow rate in must equal the mass flow rate out, otherwise the tank will overflow or go empty (transient state). While the reactor is in a transient state the model equation must be derived from the differential mass and energy balances. The reaction proceeds at the reaction rate associated with the final (output) concentration, since the concentration is assumed to be homogenous throughout the reactor. Often, it is economically beneficial to operate several CSTRs in series. This allows, for example, the first CSTR to operate at a higher reagent concentration and therefore a higher reaction rate. In these cases, the sizes of the reactors may be varied in order to minimize the total capital investment required to implement the process. It can be demonstrated that an infinite number of infinitely small CSTRs operating in series would be equivalent to a PFR. The behavior of a CSTR