Periodicity and chaos in a catalytic packed bed reactor for CO oxidation

Abstract The contribution deals with the question: What happens in a packed bed catalytic reactor in the case of an exothermic reaction and under adiabatic conditions when the reaction rate at single catalyst pellets begins to oscillate? Such oscillations are presented with the CO oxidation on Pt/Al 2 O 3 pellets, and the mechanism of their generation is discussed. Concerning a packed bed reactor it is shown that and why a profound influence of those oscillations on the dynamics of the reaction is restricted to the region of thermal bifurcation, i.e. the transition from the monostable to the bistable regime. In the pertinent range of parameter values reaction rate oscillations at pellets in the entrance section of the packed bed initiate the growth of reaction waves that propagate through the catalyst packing and give rise to large fluctuations of temperature and conversion in the exit section. Under certain conditions these fluctuations develop to deterministic chaos as it is characteristic of open systems with non-linear dynamics in bifurcation regions.