The Porous Catalyst Pellet BVP

In this section we are interested in the boundary value problem that is associated with catalyst pellets in a reactor. 

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Section 5.2 is principally similar to Section 5.f. But now we analyze the porous catalyst pellet via boundary value problems for differential equations. Here the dimensionality of the problem doubles and the resulting singular BVP is easily handled in MATLAB due to its superbly capable matrices and vector implementation of code. 

For the one second order function BVP porous catalyst pellet. 

In this section we have presented and solved the BVPs associated with the diffusion and reaction that take place in the pores of a porous catalyst pellet. The results were expressed graphically in terms of the effectiveness factor rj versus the Thiele modulus d> for two cases One with negligible external mass and heat transfer resistances, i.e., when Sh and Nu —> oo, and another with finite Sh and Nu values. This problem is very important in the design of fixed-bed catalytic reactors. The sample results presented here have shown that for exothermal reactions multiple steady states may occur over a range of Thiele moduli d>. Efficient numerical techniques have been presented as MATLAB programs that solve singular two-point boundary value problems. 

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