34 Catastrophe theory and chemical reactors: Exact uniqueness criteria for the CSTR, catalyst particle, and packed bed reactor

Abstract

The steady state manifolds for simple nth order chemical kinetics in lumped parameter reactor systems, such as the CSTR, the single catalyst particle, and the mixing cell model of the packed bed reactor, are all equivalent to the cusp catastrophe. Exact bounds between regions of unique and multiple solutions in parameter space issue from a topological approach based on this similarity.