Thermal stabilization of chemical reactors. I The mathematical descriptionof the Ender reactor

Here we describe the Ender reactor, a novel scheme for thermal control of p otentially runaway reactions. The reactor is a composite of individual reac tors, each of which houses either an exothermal or an endothermal reaction mixture. In this paper, which is Part I, we introduce the concept of an end othermally stabilized chemical reactor as an enthalpy-coupled thermokinetic system, and give it precise mathematical expression in the form of a four- dimensional dynamical system, for the special case of a continuous stirred tank reactor. The principle of enthalpy conservation is applied in the adia batic case, which together with the consequence of taking the limit of a sy stem parameter, collapses the structure of the state space to two dimension s. Criteria are defined for which the system is free of all kinds of therma l misbehaviour. This important dynamical result defines bounds for a large region of the parameter space within which this reactor may be operated saf ely.