Flow Reactor Materials Compatibility Lab — 2D

Tube Material

Process Fluid

Process Conditions

Temperature 60 °C

Exposure time 5000 h

Live Readouts

Corrosion rate— mm/yr

Wall remaining—

Time to through-wall failure—

How it works

Chemical attack on a reactor wall is thermally activated. The corrosion rate follows the Arrhenius equation, scaled by a material–fluid compatibility factor S (0 = essentially inert, 1 = severe attack):

rate(T) = k0 · S · exp[ -(Ea/R) · (1/T − 1/Tref) ]
Tref = 298.15 K, Ea ≈ 66 kJ/mol, k0 = 2 mm/year

wall remaining(t) = t0 − rate(T) · t
time to failure   = t0 / rate(T)

PTFE / PFA are fluoropolymers — near-inert to almost everything except hot oxidizers.
316 stainless steel is strong and cheap but chloride/halogen ions attack its passive oxide film, causing localized pitting — the dark spots on the coil.
Hastelloy C-276 resists a broad range of acids and halides but is not immune to hot oxidizing acids.
Borosilicate glass resists almost all acids but is etched by strong bases (and by HF).
Raising temperature 10 °C roughly doubles a thermally-activated attack rate — this is why hot flow-chemistry loops fail materials-compatibility tests that a bench-top run at room temperature would pass.

Real process engineers run accelerated corrosion coupons at elevated temperature and extrapolate with this same equation to size a safe service life before selecting reactor tubing.

Corrected from the 3D version: the source engine used Ea ≈ 30 kJ/mol, which only yields a ×1.35–1.48 rate increase per 10 °C over the sim's own operating range — while its own theory text (and real flow-chemistry practice) claims the rate "roughly doubles" every 10 °C. Verified numerically: exp[-(Ea/R)·(1/(T+10)-1/T)] ≈ 1.4 at Ea = 30 kJ/mol vs ≈ 2.0 at Ea ≈ 66 kJ/mol across 25–70 °C. This 2D version uses Ea = 66 kJ/mol so the slider behaviour actually matches the stated physics.

Tube wall (color = damage) Pitting sites

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