A CAPE tool for evaluation of adsorber-reactor systems for treatment of exhausts from mobile sources

Software for the simulation of dynamic operation and adaptive control of co mbined systems of monolithic catalytic reactors and adsorbers (catalytic tr aps) for treatment of exhausts from mobile sources is described. Monolithic reactors are modelled by a spatially I-D two-phase model consisting of a s ystem of PDE's (axial heat dispersion included! and for the adsorbers a spa tially I-D model (pseudohomogeneous for the enthalpy balance) is used. The system of PDE's is solved by the combination of the Crank-Nicolson method ( reactors) and by the method of lines (adsorbers). Results of the applicatio n of the software to two examples - the use of adsorber-reactor systems wit h mutual heat exchange for the solution of the 'cold-start' problem and an adaptive dynamically operated system of coupled monoliths for NOx reduction using feed-forward neural network for predictive control are discussed in detail. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.