chemical reactors

Hi Allan,

You might take a look at the local hobby store book rack. Model railroaders model line side industries quite a bit. While the level of detail varies from close enough to create the impression of detail to super detailed, the basic approach is fairly constant.

Quite often a series of photographs are used to create working drawings, and kept posted over the bench to compare with the evolving model. If the facility is not close enough to photograph, corporate web sites and annual reports often have photos that provide some detail.

As for machining in the kitchen, can't say I've ever had to do this. I did a lot of model building at kitchen tables growing up though, a layer of newspaper under the work and a damp paper towel clean up works pretty well. If you have to use a temporary workspace, perhaps mounting the small lathe in a box with a fold up front/top would do a good job limiting the spread of swarf. A small shop vac with the nozzle close to the work will help with dust control when sanding or polishing. I rig this up fairly often in a garage shop when doing dusty stuff, catching dust at the point of origin is easier than cleaning the entire shop when the day is done.

Cheers, Stan

Allan Adler wrote:

On 02 Sep 2003 15:46:18 -0400, Allan Adler pixelated:

Heavens! You don't EAT in the kitchen, do you? What's the matter with the couch and a TV tray in front of the wide- screen, 500-channel, Hi-def Disgronifier?

------------------------------ REAL men don't need free plans ------------------------------

REAL websites

There are lots of different reactor types in use so you'll probably want to decide on what sort of plant you want to model. Oil refineries or wastewater treatment plants would be interesting projects if you want to get really ambitious. I'm not sure where you'd find plans, but the Thomas Register has a (free) library of 3-D components. Try here and look around:

You can download models in various bitmap or CAD formats and it looks like the plant specs section has some stuff that might be useful to you, at least for conceptual purposes.

There are also folks that specialize in creating miniature models of plants and there are vendors that supply all sorts of interesting building blocks or components for that purpose. A casual acquaintance does this for a living and has created some really impressive models, all without the use of machine tools, so far as I know. The components are generally plastic, I think, and probably customized with pretty basic hand tools.

Also, if you like the miniature machine shops, take a look at:

They sell casting kits for various miniature machine tools.

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I think you'll find it difficult to get plans for chemical reactors and other industrial plant designs as they are usually built to order and each design tends to be customised for each plant and it's specific requirements. Have you tried a google.com search?

With that said you may have more luck trying books on process control engineering and maybe food plant or mining plant design.

Cheers, Ian

Hi Allan

You can find a lot of pictures in Chemical Engineering magazines, particularly their annual supplier indexes. Every manufacturer wants you to get a good look at their machines. A good place to start is Chemical and Engineering News, the weekly news mag from the American Chemical Society. Any university with Chemical Engineering program has an abundance of magazines. Also CE profs are usually happy to talk for a few minutes to visitors (gives them a break from lectures and research) and they can point you towards good resources once you have a vague idea what you want. Just think of research as part of the fun.

One compatibility suggestion. Once you decide on general size pick a standard scale (doll houses are 1" = 1', railroad scales are well defined (HO and TT being particularly rich in available stuff), a lot of big things like aircraft are modeled 1/72). Then you can buy off the shelf bits like fence and fork lifts so you can concentrate on the interesting stuff like pipe flanges and cracking towers.

Have fun

Jim

PS No, my wife would never let me machine in the kitchen. I get in enough trouble just tracking swarf into the laundry room.

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4321 Densmore Ave. N. Seattle, Wa 98103 206-634-3434 snipped-for-privacy@halcyon.com

Doing a refinery in HO would be pretty crazy space wise. The one that I worked in was over two and a half miles long and over a mile wide......and it was rated at only 290,000 barrels a day production....a fairly small refinery. 1"=20' with severe unit spacing compression would be a heck of a lot more managable. Even at that scale, most of the storage tanks in the farm would be bigger than a three pound coffee can.

BTW, if you want to take some pictures of a plant, do so during a drive by and don't stop and don't be obvious. With all the security people on a hair trigger since 9-11, you might end up spending a bit of time with the Feds.....

Craig C. snipped-for-privacy@ev1.net

I went there with Netscape and couldn't get anything. I'm running Linux on a laptop. First it complained because my browser is set not to accept cookies, so I changed that, but it made no difference: when I tried to look at the stuff on plants, I got a screen that was nearly blank except for two little text windows in the upper left, the first one blank and the second one containing the word "Called".

I don't know if it is a problem with Linux, with Netscape or what. Some websites don't work right with Netscape but work ok with Internet Explorer.

Ignorantly, Allan Adler snipped-for-privacy@zurich.ai.mit.edu

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