Isothermal PFR/PMR networks

Combinations of Plug Flow Reactor (PFR) and continuous Perfectly Mixed Reactor (PMR, also known as Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor - CSTR) are widely known to give superior performance over a single reactor especially when multiple reactions take place in the reactor. The occurrence of a PMR in an optimal reactor network requires presence of inflection condition in the space of variables describing the reactor objective. The mathematical equation for inflection of multi-dimensional trajectories is derived and applied to five cases of well-known models of kinetic schemes. The previously known results are confirmed or improved upon by applying the technique. A general algorithm for PFR/PMR network synthesis for arbitrary kinetic models is presented