Poisoning-induced exchange of steady states in a catalytic chemical reactor

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Abstract
Slow catalyst poisoning can result in the sudden failure of a chemical reactor operating isothermally with substrate-inhibited kinetics. At failure, a satisfactory steady state is exchanged for one of low conversion. The method of matched asymptotic expansions is used to give a detailed description of the exchange process in the phase plane. The structure of the jump is ascertained by separate asymptotic expansions across two adjoining transition regions in which the independent variables contain unknown shifts.