Combustion wave propagation in systems of sequential reactions with endothermal stages

Abstract

In most cases, chemical reactions in a combustion wave proceed through a multistage mechanism including chain, sequential, and parallel reactions. These authors examine the sequential chemical transformation in its two stages, exo- and endothermic. They conclude that the spatial interaction of the exo- and endothermal reactions determines the maximum transformation temperature in the combustion wave, and they examine a case where the stages have the simplest first-order power law kinetics. Observing the propagation of a combustion wave in numerical computations, they conclude that combustion rate and temperature are monotonically increasing functions of the activation energy EPSILON relationship; that for q less than or equal to 1 and sufficiently high heat absorptions, a multiplicity of the stationary combustion regime is possible; and that in the case of EPSILON greater than or equal to 1, a transition occurs from a normal combustion wave propagation regime through a degenerate regime to a bulk nonisothermal transformation. The authors conclude that the appearance of multiplicity has a single physical nature, and set forth equations whereby the interrelationships may be understood.