On the chaotic behaviour of forced fluidized bed catalytic reactors

The response of a non-isothermal fluidized bed catalytic reactor with consecutive exothermic reactions to high frequency forcing is investigated. The present investigation concentrates on the effect of the forcing amplitude on the behaviour of the system at a number of chosen positions of the centre of forcing. The behaviour of the system over the wide range of forcing amplitudes covered is found to be very sensitive to the position of the centre of forcing relative to the homoclinical orbit (infinite period bifurcation point) of the unforced system. A new type of intermittency with two laminar phases of different periodicities has been uncovered, analysed and is shown to form a transitional region between two ordinary intermittencies each with its single laminar channel. Different mechanisms of the transition between chaotic regions and periodic windows has been indentified and analysed in some details, these mechanisms include: period doubling, period halving, period adding and tangent bifurcation. The system exhibited one-dimensional stroboscopic maps which resemble the logistic map, the Rose-Hindmarsh model maps as well as the experimental one-dimensional map of bromide concentration for the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in a continuous stirred tank reactor.