Chemical reactors Langmuir-Hinshelwood model

The kinetic model developed in this study can be used to design and analyze various chemical reactors for the hydrogenation of benzaldehyde. Although it is based on a Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism, it does not prove that this is the correct mechanism. 

The strategy for predicting the temporal evolution of a complex chemical reaction described in this section is based on the application of mass balances and symmetry relations between concentration dependences, starting from extreme initial values of the concentrations. The results obtained may be very useful for advanced analysis of complex chemical reactions and can be applied to the analysis of linear models of reversible reactions in plug-flow reactors and in the linear vicinity of nonlinear complex reversible reactions both in batch reactors (closed systems) and in plug-flow reactors. They can also be applied to the analysis of pseudomonomolecular models of the Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson type for reversible reactions. 

In this book we use models of the first three types, with emphasis on the first one. For the more complicated models of the other two types die reader is referred to more specialized litterature. In modelling chemical reactors we usually proceed stepwise, starting with the smallest scale. On that scale we observe the chemical kinetics of homogeneous or heterogeneous reactions, including adsorption and desorption effects. The well known Langmuir-Hinshelwood equations for reactions at solid surfaces are examples of this sort of model. We call these molecular scale models. 

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