Applied Mathematics and Computation Seminar
Reactant conversion for a simple reaction-diffusion system
Professor Renato Feres, Washington University, St. Louis

In the study of processes used in industrial catalysis, a new type of chemical reactor, referred to as T.A.P devices (for Temporal Analysis of Products), is gaining interest among engineers. In T.A.P. experiments, chemical reactions involving gases and metal catalysts are studied under conditions of well-controled gas injection and transport. The resulting system can be modeled by a very tractable reaction-diffusion equation involving first order reaction, which may be analyzed by analytic and stochastic methods. The main problems posed are: how to determine the yield of the reaction from information about the distribution of catalyst inside the reactor; and how to extricate from the combined effect of gas transport and reaction any useful information about chemical kinetics, such as reaction constants. I will present a number of results from undergraduate research by two recent math graduates at Washington University.

Refreshments at 3:45

4:00pm–5:00pm, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 in LGRT 1634

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