LAUSR

We show that most steady-state models of chemical reactors and reacting flows in which convection effects are dominant and diffusion/conduction is neglected in the flow direction but included in the transverse directions, may change from parabolic type with a unique solution to index infinity differential-algebraic equation (DAE) type with an infinite number of steady-state solutions depending on the values of the reaction parameters. When a model is of index infinity, standard numerical methods may find only one of the solutions corresponding to latest possible ignition. We present complete bifurcation analysis of these models, a method for finding all solutions, determine the stability and, for some simpler cases, the domain of initial conditions attracted to these states. We also demonstrate that the various steady-state solutions of the DAE systems are best found by integrating the transient hyperbolic versions of the models with appropriately selected capacitance terms and initial conditions. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 295–305, 2017