Chapter 12

Chemical reactors

Thermochemical reactions which occur in industrial processing operations, such as in blast furnaces, fluidised bed roasters and other such systems, form the subject of study. Of particular interest is the interplay between reaction and temperature in exothermic reactions. The bulk of the chapter is concerned with temperature and (gas) concentrations of single pellets in gas-solid reactions, and various asymptotic limits are studied. A paradigm is the slow reaction limit of the exothermic reaction, which leads to the thermal runaway equation. The steady solution branch is studied for high activation energy, including (unusually, I think) a description of the hot branch.

Most of this applies to the porous pellet, but a description of the non-porous pellet is also given. Only in the last section is there a discussion of how to incorporate the local description in a macroscopic model.