Taylor expansion, asymptotic solutions

When the residence time becomes shorter, this approach becomes questionable for several reasons. For example, the asymptotic state may not have been reached yet, or the peaks may be unsymmetrical. These "short-time" situations may be encountered when trying to apply chromatographic concepts to the study of dispersion in connecting tubes, or in some apphcations, such as hollow-fiber liquid chromatography. Shankar and Lenhoff [77] have derived a solution in the time domain, using series expansion. This solution can be implemented by numerical computation for the determination of concentration profiles inside a tube coated with a retentive layer, when the fluid flow is laminar. This solution is valid for systems that are either short or long after the Taylor-Aris definition. 

Formulas (4.9), (4.10) provide the approximate solution on the slow time scale. From these asymptotics one can see that the second and third components tend to zero, whereas the first one tends to a nonzero constant y = (W/A) at infinity. If we use Taylor expansions of the left sides of Eqs. (4.9) and (4.10), the error estimate of the asymptotic behavior at infinity can easily be derived as follows ... 

In addition to a near-shock and an acoustic region, Deshaies and Clavin (1979) distinguished a third—a near-piston region—where nonlinear effects play a role as well. As already pointed out by Taylor (1946), the near-piston flow regime may be well approximated by the assumption of incompressibility. For each of these regions, Deshaies and Clavin (1979) developed solutions in the form of asymptotic expansions in powers of small piston Mach number. These solutions are supposed to hold for piston Mach numbers lower than 0.35. 

Imagine the reactor is initially at this steady state and at t 0 we perturb the temperature and concentration by small amounts. We would like to know whether or not the system returns to the steady state after this initial condition perturbation. If so, we call the steady-state solution (asymptotically) stable. If not, we call the steady state unstable. Obviously we can solve numerically the nonlinear differential equations to answer this question, but then we answer the question on a case-by-case basis. By linearizing the nonlinear differential equations, we can gain further insight without resorting to full numerical solution. Consider the Taylor series expansion of the.nonlinear functions f, fz... 

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