Nonlinear dynamics and control of a recycle fixed bed reactor

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Primarily to describe the dynamic behaviour that can be observed in a fixed bed reactor with recycle of unconverted reactant. Secondly to describe the possibilities of model reduction in order to facilitate control design. Reactant recycle has been shown to introduce periodic solution to the fixed bed reactor, a phenomenon which is not seen for the system without the recycle, at least not within the Peclet number range investigated in the present work. The possibility of model reduction by the methods of modal decomposition, and by characteristics are investigated in the paper for the present case. Finally a criterion for actuator selection is formulated, and a simulated control example is given.