Reaction Mechanism and the Effect of Forced Temperature Cycling On the Reactor Performance

Chemical reactors are usually operated at a steady state. However, it has been pointed out that they exhibit higher conversion or selectivity under unsteady state operation. Forced temperature cycling operation is a kind of unsteady state operation, under which the reactor temperature is deliberately changed periodically by means of a suitable heating and cooling devices.

There are a large number of heterogeneously catalysed reactions, which can be classified to different types by the number of elementary reactions, and relative magnitude of catalytic parameters.

This presentation focusses on the relationship between the types of reaction and the improvement in the conversion, or selectivity.