Longitudinal mass and heat dispersion in tubular reactors

The wave model for longitudinal dispersion, presented in previous papers as an alternative to the axially dispersed plug flow model, is extended to isothermal and adiabatic chemical reactors with reaction rates described by arbitrary expressions. The extended wave model is applied to the calculation of tubular reactors with three well-known types of chemical reaction: the consecutive reaction, the exothermic first-order reaction in an adiabatic reactor, and the autocatalytic reaction. Numerical solutions of the two-dimensional equations describing laminar flow tubular reactors are used for testing the validity of the wave model and the axially dispersed plug flow model. A special type of reactor is treated to stress the fundamental differences between the wave model and the dispersed plug flow model. It is confirmed that the extended wave model has a much wider region of validity than the dispersed plug flow model and is a suitable tool in reactor modeling.