Presidential Young Investigator Award

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This grant is to provide research support for Dr. Rodney O. Fox under the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Awards Program. Flow reactors are used for both fundamental kinetic studies and industrial chemical manufacturing. Dynamic modelling for process control and kinetic studies of flow reactors have involved lumped models consisting of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations. In formulating these models, it is assumed that the transport processes occur at time scales much shorter than those of the chemical kinetics. Experimentally it has been assumed that, with the stirring rate sufficiently high, the dynamical behavior depends only on the chemical kinetics. In fact, bistabilities and time-dependent behavior can be strongly influenced by the premixing configuration and the stirring rate, even when the latter is relatively fast compared to the residence time. The PI's research is in the area of studying the effect of mixing on the dynamical behavior of flow reactors. Specifically, detailed experimental and analytical investigation is planned of the mixing effects in chemical oscillators with the dual goals of understanding the interplay between transport and chemical reactions and of developing accurate mixing models for systems involving multiple reaction steps. Another area to be looked at will be the mathematical simulation of turbulent reactive flows in flow reactors. The PI plans to use the probability density function method using Fokker-Planck closure based on diffusion in the lamellar structures generated by the chaotic flow field. He plans to look at the effects of reaction terms for nonpremixed feed flows.