| The feasibility and merit of applying the recently acclaimed nonlinear programming optimization technique, the Wilson-Han-Powell technique, to reactor design problems has been investigated. Results clearly indicate that it has merit for solving such problems and was able to find an optimal temperature trajectory relative to the optimal isothermal operation.;Application of the technique was not straightforward but required special reformulating of the objective function and the constraint equations which involved time derivatives.;The technique was shown to converge to an optimal solution for both temperature trajectory and isothermal operation from a variety of starting points, convergence limits and time increment sizes. Potential limitations of the method for more complicated problems appear to be the memory size and the great computing time required.;An exhaustive review of the generalized equations for reactor modeling, incorporating a complete derivation, is also presented. Use of these equations to model specific reactor systems is then demonstrated and shown to provide a powerful method for modeling reactor systems of all types. |
