DYNAMIC EFFECTS OF RECYCLE ELEMENTS IN TUBULAR REACTOR systems,

Although tubular reactor-recycle systems frequently contain elements such as mixing tanks or heat exchangers, the effects of material capacitance or heat losses upon the system stability have not been hitherto considered. Methods are presented in this paper for determining the local asymptotic stability of reactor-recycle systems possessing such elements. These methods are applied to two representative systems one having a mixing tank at the reactor inlet and the other containing a heat exchanger in the recycle line. It is shown that the presence of either of these elements does not have a deleterious effect upon the local stability and may even tend to stabilize the system under appropriate conditions. Author