Spatiotemporal patterns in thermokinetic models of cross-flow reactors

The behavior of stationary and moving spatially-periodic patterns in a simple crossflow reactor was simulated and analyzed for a situation in which reactant is supplied continuously along the reactor and a first-order exothermic reactor occurs. The Danck-werts boundary conditions for realistic Le and Pc values. While the unbounded (infinitely long) reactor is an asymptotic case used to study the stability of the homogeneous solution the moving waves that emerge in the convectively unstable unbounded system may be arrested at the boundaries of a bounded system and stationary waves are established above some amplification threshold. Sustained periodic and aperiodic behavior may emerge under certain conditions. The spatial behaviour in the bounded system with Pe --> infinity is analogous to the temporal behavior of the simple thermokinetic CSTR problem and the behavior of the distributed system is classified according to that of the lumped one.