OSCIL - Oscillating Tank Reactor Behaviour

A water-cooled, continuous stirred-tank reactor is used to carry out the following exothermic parallel reactions 

5 Simulation Tools and Examples of Chemical Engineering Processes 

The parameters used in the program give a steady-state solution, representing, however, a non-stable operating point at which the reactor tends to produce natural, sustained oscillations in both reactor temperature and concentration. Proportional feedback control of the reactor temperature to regulate the coolant flow can, however, be used to stabilise the reactor. With positive feedback control, the controller action reinforces the natural oscillations and can cause complete instability of operation. 

Note that this includes terms for the rates of heat generation of both reactions. As shown in Sec. 1.2.5, the heat balance equation is equivalent to 

Both the effects of coolant flow rate and coolant inlet temperature are thus incorporated in the model. 

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OSCIL - Oscillating Tank Reactor Behaviour System... 

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The nonlinearity of chemical processes received considerable attention in the chemical engineering literature. A large number of articles deal with stand-alone chemical reactors, as for example continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR), tubular reactor with axial dispersion, and packed-bed reactor. The steady state and dynamic behaviour of these systems includes state multiplicity, isolated solutions, instability, sustained oscillations, and exotic phenomena as strange attractors and chaos. In all cases, the main source of nonlinearity is the positive feedback due to the recycle of heat, coupled with the dependence of the reaction rate versus temperature. 

Multiple Steady States and Local Stability in CSTR.—In the two decades since the seminal work of van Heerden and Amimdson, there has been vast output of papers conoemed with the dynamic behaviour of stirred-tank reactors. Bilous and Amundson put the van He den analysis of local stability of the equilibrium state on a rigorous basis by use of linear stability theory. Their method is similar to the phase-plane treatments of thermokinetic ignitions and oscillations discussed here in Sections 4 and 3 (and preceded them dironologically). The mass and energy balance for the CSTR having a single reactant as feedstock may be expressed as ... 

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