An investigation of conservation of fluid oscillation in a continuous oscillatory baffled reactor

Continuous oscillatory baffled reactors (COBRs) have been utilised in organic synthesis and crystallisation, however, no validation work has yet been conducted to determine if the fluid displacement caused by the oscillation at the start of the COBR is conserved at the end of the COBR. This work reports, for the first time, both experimental measurements and theoretical evaluations of the displacement. The experimental validation involves physically measuring the fluid displacement using a laser distance sensor located at the end of the COBR. Surprisingly, the measured displacement values at some operating conditions differ from the initial settings. The theoretical evaluation entails the determination of power dissipation across the COBR using the pressure measurements at four locations along the COBR. The model evaluated displacements agree well with the experimental measurements at all operational conditions, validating the methodologies used in this work.