Hs. Sidhu et al., A DETAILED STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF FORCING A HYDROCARBON OXIDATION REACTION, Mathematical and computer modelling, 24(8), 1996, pp. 65-88
The Gray-Yang thermokinetic or chain-thermal model of hydrocarbon oxid
ation is able to explain many of the experimentally observed phenomena
in hydrocarbon oxidation. The model incorporates initiation, branchin
g and termination processes where the rates of both the branching and
one of the termination processes are governed by Arrhenius kinetics wi
th different activation energies. The solutions to the governing equat
ions yield the temperature in the vessel and the concentration of the
intermediate chemical species. Under certain circumstances, these solu
tions can exhibit oscillatory behaviour. In this paper, we investigate
the scenario in which the Gray-Yang model is subjected to additional
external oscillations by varying the ambient temperature sinusoidally.
We show the presence of primary, super and subharmonic resonances, as
well as period-doubled solutions and even deterministic chaos for app
ropriate parameter values. More importantly, particularly from the ind
ustrial point of view, we study the effects of such external forcing o
n the gains in selectivity and yield of a desired product.