ON THE APPROPRIATENESS OF USE OF A CONTINUOUS FORMULATION FOR THE MODELING OF DISCRETE MULTIREACTANT SYSTEMS FOLLOWING MICHAELIS-MENTEN KINETICS

The possibility of solving the mass balances to a multiplicity of subs trates within a CSTR in the presence of a chemical reaction following Michaelis-Menten kinetics using the assumption that the discrete distr ibution of said substrates is well approximated by an equivalent conti nuous distribution on the molecular weight is explored. The applicabil ity of such reasoning is tested with a convenient numerical example. I n addition to providing the limiting behavior of the discrete formulat ion as the number of homologous substrates increases, the continuous f ormulation yields in general simpler functional forms for the final di stribution of substrates than the discrete counterpart due to the recu rsive nature of the solution in the latter case.