The laminar flow tubular reactor with homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions - I. Integral equations for diverse reaction rate regimes

Design equations for non-isothermal Laminar Flow Tubular Reactors (LFTRs) w ith homogeneous and heterogeneous at the reactor wall reactions with arbitr ary kinetic equations have been satisfactorily treated transforming the ori ginal P.D.E. problem into a system of integral equations. The kernels of th e integral operators are related to an eigenvalue problem which does not de pend on the kinetic equations; this avoids repetitive computational effort in the treating of different reaction kinetics. To render a more efficient numerical treatment and according to the governi ng reaction rate regime, modified expressions of the general solution were obtained was follows: (i) a solution with kernels depending only on the dif fusion and convective times was obtained for a low reaction regime; (ii) an other solution with kernels including the reaction rime, besides the diffus ion and convective ones, was necessary for a fast reaction regime and (iii) the local quasi-steady-state approximation was obtained as limiting case o f solution (ii) for a instantaneous reaction regime.