Effect of catalyst fouling on the behavior of an adiabatic packed bed catalytic reactor

This work investigates the effect of catalyst fouling on the behavior of an adiabatic packed bed catalytic reactor. It was found that a reactor in which multiple steady states can occur may exhibit instability when subjected to catalyst fouling. Two types of fouling mechanisms were examined, a series type and a parallel type. It was demonstrated that each of the two mechanisms affected the reactor quite differently. A stability analysis was performed on the system to determine the effect of the various parameters and the fouling on the reactor stability. It was shown that catalyst fouling may either stabilize or destabilize a reactor. Numerical solutions of the transient equations were performed to determine reactor behavior with different types of fouling. Results of these computations show that for some cases fouling may cause a reactor to become very sensitive to perturbations.