Chemical reaction is at the heart of the unit processes. A chemical reactor is an equipment which falls under the category of unit processes. Literal chemical change takes place inside the equipment wherein the the chemical structure of the material changes and it transforms and forms an entirely new material.
All kinds of chemical reactions carried out in industrial equipments comes under this category. Some examples of such chemical reactions are; sulphonation, nitration, halogenation, alkylation, hydrolysis, hydrogenation, polymerization, oxidation, reduction, etc. The examples can be innumerable as there can be innumerable compounds which can be formed by reaction of two or more materials or by decomposition of the material itself. Thus classification can be similarly endless.
Most of the chemical reactions are irreversible in nature. A chemical reaction step in a process forms the heart of the process, often governing the economics of the entire process. Thus the unit processes are often subject of optimization.
Often unit operations have to be carried out before unit processes to give proper shape to the materials so that they will be able to react optimally. Also unit operations are often needed even after the chemical reaction has happened, they are needed for the purpose of separation of the primary product from the secondary or tertiary products. All the unit operation processes wherein chemical reaction is made to take place to improve the efficiency of the equipment also falls under unit processes. For example, reactive distillation, reactive extraction, reactive absorption, etc.
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