Clearly, instability limits the degree of inherent safety of a reacting system, but so far much more attention has been paid to the analysis of the multiplicity features of reacting systems while only a little works has been reported on the stability analysis of reacting systems under open-loop conditions.
A study of the multiplicity features of a single catalytic pellet on which either ethane, carbon monoxide or both reactants were oxidized revealed several new features such as: four different stable states during the co-oxidation of both reactants and three states during the oxidation of carbon monoxide.
Several of the multiplicity features are atypical of conventional isothermal CO oxidation behavior, such as a (T̂w CO/O2) multiplicity region (bifurcation map) having an extinction branch with a local maximum, which is indicative of a pitchfork singularity.
The interaction between the boundary set of feasible operation and the bifurcation set is shown to be of great importance for the understanding of multiplicity and stability features for this type of column configuration.
The steady state multiplicity features of porous catalytic pellets, the temperature of which is uniform but different from that of the surrounding, are determined for a zeroth-order reaction.
The steady state multiplicity features of porous catalytic pellets, the temperature of which is uniform but different from that of the surrounding, are determined for reactions of positive order.
A new linear algebraic method that makes use of the Carleman linearization procedure is given for determining the local multiplicity features of chemical reaction systems.
Simulation studies reveal the hitherto unreported existence of multiple isolas and unusual multiplicity features, arising from isola evolution for some regions of reactor parameter space.
The generality of the observed multiplicity features, the observation of hot spots, and the rational model construct rules out a more complicated kinetic mechanism that would be necessary to explain the data.
The predictions of this local theory provide important theoretical guidance in the global analysis of the multiplicity features.
