THE DYNAMICS OF COUPLED NONISOTHERMAL CONTINUOUS STIRRED TANK REACTORS

Two continuous stirred tank reactors, each with an exothermic chemical reaction, are coupled by heat or mass transfer. Using mass-transfer coupling with identical reactors, chaos occurs by the period doubling route as the strength of the coupling is increased. The chaos is first of a symmetry breaking type, but with larger amounts of coupling it becomes symmetric with respect to interchanging the reactors. In the case of heat-transfer coupling, it is shown that chaotic behaviour can occur with a distorted torus attractor.