Thermal stabilization of chemical reactors. I the mathematical description of the Endex reactor

Here we describe the Endex reactor, a novel scheme for thermal control of potentially runaway reactions. The reactor is a composite of individual reactors, each of which houses either an exothermal or an endothermal reaction mixture. In this paper, which is Part I, we introduce the concept of an endothermally stabilized chemical reactor as an enthalpy-coupled thermokinetic system, and give it precise mathematical expression in the form of a four-dimensional dynamical system, for the special case of a continuous stirred tank reactor. The principle of enthalpy conservation is applied in the adiabatic case, which together with the consequence of taking the limit of a system parameter, collapses the structure of the state space to two dimensions. Criteria are denned for which the system is free of all kinds of thermal misbehaviour. This important dynamical result defines bounds for a large region of the parameter space within which this reactor may be operated safely.