Effects of Heat Conductivity on Travelling Wave in Cyclically Operating Fixed-Bed Reactors

The dynamic behaviour of the moving reaction zone in catalystic, fixed-bed reactors with a strongly exothermic reaction can be described as a wave propagation process. Effects of several important parameters on character of temperature and concenteration waves in cyclically operating fixed-bed reactors are investigated by means of computer simulation. On the basis of observation of those iffects, a model reduction is made to apply a self-adjoint operator formalism for the analysis of dynamic behaviour of the waves. An explicit expression for temperature wave is derived as a natural consequence of this approach and shows good qualitative consistences with simulation results.