Experimental and theoretical investigation of the validity of asymptotic lumped kinetics

✍ Scribed by T. C. Ho; B. S. White

• Publisher: American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 590 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-1541
• DOI: 10.1002/aic.690410615

✦ Synopsis

Continuum approximation is often used to treat problems involving reaction mixtures of a vast number of species. Previous studies predicted that in many situations the lumped kinetics of a continuum of reactions, regardless of their kinetics, are of the power law form after a long time. In this article we present experimental support for such asymptotic power law kinetics. The system considered is catalytic deep desulfurization of a petroleum distillate. In addition, a theoretical analysis is made to establish the condition under which the continuum approximation is ualid in the long-time limit. The condition turns out not to be very stringent for practical purposes.