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Following is the schematic and all of the equations for a thermal cracker.
The feed to the reactor is ethane and water, and the outlet products from
the reaction are ethene, hydrogen, methane, and water. Even though the
reaction to produce ethene involves only the ethane, ethene, hydrogen, and
methane, water is added to the reactor to keep the temperature down and
reduce coking.
In order to find out how big the reactor needs to be, how ethene is
produces, and how high the temperature is inside the reactor, a set of
mass and energy balance equations need to be solved. These
ordinary differential equations (ODE's) can be solved by Matlab and Excel.
![[PICTURE]](http:Thermal_Cracking.gif)
