Suboptimal Design of an SO2-Oxidation Catalytic Reactor

A fixed-volume tubular reactor for oxidation of SO2 over commercial V2O5 catalyst is optimized with respect to reactor radius and surface heat flux as a function of axial distance. The suboptimal method employs ordinary functional-differential adjoint equations, rather than partial differential equations. It differs from weighted residual approximation methods in that the dimension of the state and adjoint equations are not the same. The suboptimal design shows a nearly constant radius in the absence of a temperature constraint.