Chapter 6 - Reaction of a continuous mixture in a bubbling fluidized bed

Abstract

The fluid bed and the continuous mixture are examined together since one of the first applications of each is the important process of catalytic cracking. The very large number of components in crude oil and the method of reporting its analysis (formerly by boiling point and later by simulated b.p. or chromatographic retention time) call out to be described by a continuous distribution over a parameter. The catalytic cracking of crude oil can be taken, in the first instance, to be a large number of parallel first order reactions, and this is just the kind of system that continuous mixture theory was designed to handle. The chapter also provides a general theorem for simple linear reactor models. By a reactor model, it means a system of equations (algebraic ordinary or partial differential, functional, or integral) which purports to represent a chemical reactor in whole or in part. It is called linear if all its equations are linear and simple if its input and output can be characterized by single concentration-like variables, u0 and u. The relation of input and output also will depend on a set of parameters.