Adaptive model reduction and simulation of thermal cracking of multicomponent hydrocarbon mixtures
Because of the high dimensionality and the high degree of coupling the simulation of multicomponent mixture processes requires a suitable technique for model size reduction to facilitate the numerical solution if the mixture comprises a large number of components. Established techniques of pseudo-component lumping group (lump) the chemical species by introducing pseudo-components and formulate reaction kinetics for these fictitious components. The introduced error associated with this procedure can neither be estimated nor controlled. A continuous compositional representation of the mixture introduces more flexibility in the model size reduction. Using a Galerkin discretization scheme in combination with a wavelet-based error control and adaptation strategy a model size reduction technique is introduced which allows the specification of a desired accuracy. A simple example representing the thermal cracking of a hydrocarbon mixture modeled by means of the breakage equation is used to illustrate the new method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
model size reduction lumping breakage equation adaptive discretization galerkin scheme population balance