CATALYSIS UNDER TRANSIENT CONDITIONS effect

Our main motivation to develop the specific transient technique of wavefront analysis, presented in detail in (21, 22, 5), was to make feasible the direct separation and direct measurements of individual relaxation steps. As we will show this objective is feasible, because the elements of this technique correspond to integral (therefore amplified) effects of the initial rate, the initial acceleration and the differential accumulative effect. Unfortunately the implication of the space coordinate makes the general mathematical analysis of the transient responses cumbersome, particularly if one has to take into account the axial dispersion effects. But we will show that the mathematical analysis of the fastest wavefront which only will be considered here, is straight forward, because it is limited to ordinary differential equations dispersion effects are important only for large residence times of wavefronts in the system, i.e. for slow waves. We naturally recognize that this technique requires an additional experimental and theoretical effort, but we believe that it is an effective technique for the study of catalysis under technical operating conditions, where the micro- as well as the macrorelaxations above mentioned are equally important. 

An effective approach to help address the issues involved in controlling catalyst performance is to formulate and analyze reaction schemes that describe the essential chemistry taking place on the catalyst surface. This approach has been used successfully in catalysis research for many years. We suggest that this approach will see increased use in catalysis research. Specifically, continuing improvements in computer capabilities allow rapid analysis of complex reaction schemes for all common reactor configurations (e.g., reactors operating at steady state as well as under transient reaction conditions and nonisothermal reactors). Moreover, recent advances in quantum... 

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