The influence of the flow of the reacting gas on the conditions for a thermal explosion (Q4374976)

New modification of the classical problem of thermal explosion theory is presented with application to duct-type chemical reactor with a constant wall temperature. With a given cross-section distribution of the velocity of reacting gas, the mathematical formulation of the problem reduces to a boundary value problem for second-order partial differential equation of energy balance with respect to dimensionless temperature. The boundary conditions require the absence of heat influx on the axis of symmetry, and constant temperature in the whole inlet section (equal to the wall temperature). Numerical simulations are carried out with accounting for the chemical energy release according to Arrhenius law for dependence of the reaction rate on temperature for laminar and developed turbulent flows. It is shown that in the supercritical regime, when the radius of the tube is larger than a critical value, the solution of the problem exists only on an interval of length equal to the length of tube axis. The loss of existence of solution, which appears as the divergence of numerical procedure, is naturally interpreted as a thermal explosion. The critical distance is identified with the safe reactor's length. The dimensionless critical distance is determined numerically in both cases as a function of dimensionless tube radius, and the scaling laws are presented for asymptotic behavior of solution at moderate and large values of the radius.