Variation Iteration Method for Solving Ethanol and Acetaldehyde Concentrations in a Fixed Bed Laboratory Reactor

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effects of nonlinear behaviour of the dimensionless concentrations of the ethanol and acetaldehyde in a fixed bed laboratory reactor. The work is based on solving the nonlinear differential equation of concentration of the ethanol and acetaldehyde by means of the He's variational iteration method (VIM). Also, the numerical simulation (4th order Runge - Kutta method) is reported using Matlab software. The analytical solutions are compared with numerical results in order to achieve conclusions based on not only for accuracy and efficiency of the solutions, but also the simplicity of the taken procedures which would have remarkable effects on the time devoted for solving process. The analytical result reported in this work is useful to understand the behaviour of the system. Furthermore, due to the accuracy and convergence of obtained solutions, it is proved that the VIM could be applied through other nonlinear problems even with high nonlinearity.