Effect of Process Design on the Open-loop Behavior of a Jacketed Exothermic CSTR

Abstract

The classic two-state continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) model has been the focus of much of the previous research on exothermic reactor operation. One assumption of this model is that the cooling jacket temperature dynamics are negligible, hence the cooling jacket temperature is the manipulated input (instead of the cooling jacket flowrate) for feedback control of reactor temperature. The influence of process design parameters on the open-loop behavior of a three-state CSTR model (which incorporates an energy balance around the cooling jacket) is considered in this paper. Elementary catastrophe theory is used to study the effect of process parameters on the steady-state multiplicity of the three-state CSTR model. We demonstrate the existence of disjoint bifurcations associated with infeasible reactor operation regions. Reactor scaleup is shown to have an effect on the presence of these infeasible reactor operation regions. A multiple time-scale perturbation analysis is used to understand the effect of reactor design on the oscillation amplitude of the three-state CSTR model at a Hopf bifurcation point.