Patent ID: 8065038

Claim:
A method of optimizing a chemical reaction in a reactor, comprising: a) defining mass balance equations, energy balance equations, and constraint equations of a dynamic model of the reactor for a given reaction on the basis of a model of the reaction chamber and of the heat exchanges between said reaction chamber and the side chambers for circulating utility fluid; b) simulating the behavior of the reactor for said reaction by applying an integration software tool to solve the above equations of the dynamic model using theoretical values of physical parameters in the dynamic model; c) varying at least dimension parameters of the reactor and selecting optimal dimension parameters for which evaluating targets are achieved and constraints are complied with; d) building a plate reactor by at least stacking plates defining said at least one block according to the optimal dimension parameters; e) using the built plate reactor constituted by a stack of plates defining between them at least one block having a reaction chamber formed between two heat exchange side chambers for circulating a heat exchange utility fluid, means for feeding the reaction chamber with a continuous flow of one or more reagents, and means for feeding the two side chambers with a continuous flow of utility fluid built in step d); and f) measuring physical parameters of said reaction including the temperature and the pressure during the execution of said reaction in the built plate reactor, and validating operation of the built plate reactor if said measurements are close to the theoretical values of physical parameters; g) establishing a new dynamic model of the reactor on the basis of the built reactor; h) applying the integration software tool to this new dynamic model to solve the above equations; i) optimizing again the said set of dimension and/or operation parameters of the reactor; and j) modifying if necessary the said built reactor, accordingly to the new optimized set of parameters.