Safe Operating Region for Liquid-Phase Oxidation of Hydrocarbons

Abstract

A method for determining the safe operating region for liquid-phase oxidation of hydrocarbons in perfectly mixed flow tank reactors is proposed. This region containing the steady state can be constructed by the state variables of a reactor in state space. All trajectories of the representative points pass into the region at the boundary surface.
Since the representative points in the region never drift out, it is safe to keep the reactor in the region for steady-state operation and to choose trajectories that cannot drift into an explosive region before approaching the safe operating region during start-up of the reactor.