Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2016
Motivated by the problem of solid catalytic particle attrition during chemical reactions we formulate a continuous-time Markov model to describe the shattering of a particle when it is assumed that particles can be classified into a small number of types by size. We then obtain a recursive expression for the joint probability generating function of the count of the different types of particle at time t and derive a system of differential equations for the mean number of particle counts and a system of matrix differential equations for the covariance matrix of the particle counts. Solutions to these differential equations are presented in an important special case.
On leave from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
Research partially supported by NSF Grant No. MCS-81–02215.