Quantifying the impact of temporal analysis of products reactor initial
state uncertainties on kinetic parameters
Abstract
The temporal analysis of products (TAP) reactor provides a route to
extract intrinsic kinetics from transient measurements. Current TAP
uncertainty quantification only considers the experimental noise present
in the outlet flow signal. Additional sources of uncertainty such as
initial surface coverages, catalyst zone location, inert void fraction,
gas pulse intensity and pulse delay, are not included. For this reason,
a framework for quantifying initial state uncertainties present in TAP
experiments is presented and applied to a carbon monoxide oxidation case
study. Two methods for quantifying these sources of uncertainty are
introduced. The first utilizes initial state sensitivities to
approximate the parameter variances and provide insights into the
structural certainty of the model. The second generates parameter
confidence distributions through an ensemble-based sampling algorithm.
The initial state covariance matrix can ultimately be merged with the
experimental noise covariance matrix, providing a unified description of
the parameter uncertainties for a TAP experiment.