Bifurcation analysis of a hybrid continuous stirred tank reactor with imperfect mixing in the cooling jacket

The paper discusses the effects of imperfect mixing on the dynamical behaviour of a partially simulated jacketed reactor. In the partially simulated exothermic reactor, the reactor jacket and vessel are real, but the chemical reactor is simulated by using a mathematical model and electric heaters to generate the reaction heat. The hybrid plant can be used as a benchmark plant for testing control algorithms, which is more realistic case than numerical simulations. It is experimentally shown that the coolant in the jacket is not well-mixed, while the main vessel content is well-mixed by using a recycle pump. Treating flow rate of coolant Fj as the main bifurcation parameter, we study the effect of internal recycle flow rate in the jacket on the number of steady-states and dynamical behaviour of the hybrid plant. It is shown that the imperfect mixing in the jacket is not as significant as the imperfect mixing in the main reactor vessel. The obtained results also show that for a given mixing conditions in the jacket, the reactor jacket model can be simplified by assuming perfect mixing conditions.