DEPENDENCE OF THE MULTIPLICITY FEATURES OF AN ISOTHERMAL CATALYTIC REACTION ON EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL TRANSPORT RESISTANCES

Abstract

A mathematical model (Robin) which accounts for both internal and external transport resistances is used to determine the multiplicity features of a porous catalytic pellet in which an isothermal Langmuir-Hinshelwood reaction occurs. At most three solutions exist for a slab, but an arbitrarily large number of solutions can be found for an infinite cylinder or a spherical pellet. The maximal number of solutions for any finite external mass transfer resistance is bounded between that existing for a model which ignores the external mass transfer resistance and one which ignores intra-particle concentration gradients. The approximate shape of the cross section of the bifurcation set and of the uniqueness boundary of the Robin model can be estimated from the knowledge of the multiplicity features of three simplified (lumped, Dirichlet and Neumann) models, each containing one less parameter.