Residence Time Calculator

Understanding residence time in continuous flow chemistry

One of the key distinctions between traditional batch chemistry and continuous flow chemistry is residence time—the amount of time a reaction mixture spends inside the reactor.

In continuous flow systems, residence time is directly influenced by the flow rate: the slower you pump your reagents, the longer they remain in the reactor. This extended interaction time can be crucial for reactions requiring longer contact or precise control.

Accurately calculating residence time in a flow reactor helps chemists optimise reaction conditions and predict the throughput of a process running at steady state. It's a critical parameter for scaling up, improving reproducibility, and enhancing efficiency in modern chemical manufacturing.

ATR Residence Time Calculator

The working reactor volume of the Coflore ATR can be altered through changing the ATR reactor tube volume (either 0.35 L or 1.25 L) and the number of ATR reactor tubes in total on the platform (between 1 and 8).

Use the residence time calculator below to easily work out the reaction mixture throughput for a Coflore ATR depending on the size and quantities of ATR reactor tubes, and the residence time of your chemical process.

ATR Pump Flowrate Calculator

The desired residence time calculator below allows you to calculate the pump flowrates required to achieve a desired reaction residence time in the Coflore ATR. Remember - if you are feeding in multiple reagents at different points (i.e. reagent 1 at ATR tube 1, reagent 2 at ATR tube 2), then the working reactor volume for the purpose of calculating your required reaction residence time will be the number of ATR tubes downstream of the final reagent addition point.

Residence Time Distribution

Residence time distribution (RTD) is the probability distribution function that a solid or fluid element will exit a continuous flow system, used as a measure of plug flow. Residence time distribution is often displayed on a bell-shaped curve, with a narrow curve indicating better resistance time uniformity across all of the molecules within a flow reactor. A narrow residence time distribution is essential for process uniformity and is one of the key requirements of any flow reactor.

Our Coflore systems are continuously testing and evaluating to generate technical content and case studies to demonstrate their versatility and modularity. The Coflore ACR, ATR and RTR systems have all had several investigations to determine the residence time distributions with respect to variables such as residence time and agitation frequency. Our blog article, Residence Time Distribution Across Coflore Systems, takes a deeper look into the RTD testing undertaken for each of our Coflore systems, check out the blog to learn more.