Kinetics of Benzene Hydrogenation

Many chemical engineering and biophysical problems can be formulated in terms of differential equations. A differential equation is an equation involving a relation between one or more of its derivatives and an unknown function. Ordinary differential equations can be classified as either initial-value problems (IVP), or boundary-value problems (BVP). The Euler method is explicit since the function is evaluated with known information. But it is not clear whether the Euler method is able to provide an accurate approximation to chemical engineering problems. To find answers to this question, this research presented examples which illustrate the properties of the Euler method. As an example, we analyzed the kinetics of benzene hydrogenation on a supported catalyst. In the presence of a large excess of hydrogen, the reaction shows pseudo-first-order at temperatures below a certain temperature. Also energy and material balance in the reactor has been studied under adiabatic process. As a result, formulation of the governing differential equations and evaluation of the stiffness have been carried out using Euler and the Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg methods.