ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF STEADY-STATE SOLUTIONS FOR POROUS CATALYTIC PELLETS - 1ST-ORDER REVERSIBLE-REACTIONS

An analysis of the structure of the steady-state solutions has been performed for teh model which describes transport phenomena and first-order reversible chemical reaction in porous catalyst pellet. The model equations have been derived based on the assumption that the temperature of the pellet is uniform but different from that of the surrounding fluid. Applying theorems of the singularity theory a systematic division of the feasible parameter space into regions with different bifurcation diagrams (i.e. with different numbers of possible solutions of the steady-state equation) was carried out. The plane of feasible values of Φo and β* was divided into subregions where at most seven, five and three solutions can appear for some values of the parameters κ, K′ and γ. It was also shown that the exact ranges of the values of κ, K′ and ψ for a number of solutions analysed can be obtained by constructing the hysteresis varieties and bifurcation diagrams for the points taken from the subregions of the (Φo, β*) plane. The analysis revealed an interesting finding,that the maximal number of solutions of the steady-state equation (seven) exceeds in the global parameter space the highest codimension of the singular point (five) by more than one (and, specifically, by two). © 1990.