Perturb/Alter the _____ of the system during a simulation run?
Temperature (program temperature runs), species
concentrations (simulating diffusion of oxygen into a solution, pH quenching, induction of
current, external concentration alterations) and volume changes (for various piston
compressions) can all be simulated using the "Temperature (K) or Filename" in
the PARM spreadsheet, the "Constant File?" field in the SPECIES description
spreadsheet or the "Volume Profile" field in the PARM spreadsheet respectively.
You can see an animation of how this is done if you point your web browser to
www.kintecus.org and look under the
Animations.
Specify the mass flow rates "in and out" to compute a
continuous flow reactor?
In the species flowsheet there are two columns:
"Residence Time in CSTR(s)" and "External
Concentration". "The Residence Time in CSTR", is the total time a species
stays in the CSTR from once it enters the CSTR (the in part) and the time it exits (out
part). I leave it up to the modeler to figure this part out. If the flow is laminar than a
simple time=distance/velocity can be used, but if there is some turbulence than a more
detailed method to calculated the average Residence time will be needed. The
"External Concentration" is the concentration of the species once it enters the
CSTR and NOT the concentration of the species in the pre-mix tank, i.e. if a 5 MOLAR
concentration of species A enters a CSTR tank that will dilute it by 10:1, then the
"External Concentration" will be 0.5 Molar entering the tank. The
Oregonator_in_CSTR Excel Spreadsheet demonstrates this, you might also want to get the
paper it references the model and experimental data from. A side note, you might ask
yourself, "Shouldn't all the species have the SAME "Residence Time in
CSTR(s)" since all the species are being "pushed" out the CSTR at the same
time?" and the answer is "YES". Kintecus allows different Residence Times
in the CSTR for "special" instances of where zeolites, surfaces or other species
inhibitor might slow the average flow of one species against another.
Specify a constant Pressure system ?
As specified by the "Pressure Constant
(YES/NO)" field in the PARM spreadsheet. Specifying "NO" in this field
selects a variable pressure (constant volume) run.
Register Kintecus ?
Kintecus is not freeware but shareware. Please view the
Registration Section in the Kintecus documentation (see the Download
Webpage or the zip file) for full registration forms. Education Institutions and/or
Students can register here: Register.
Reference Kintecus ?
Ianni, James C., Kintecus , Windows Version
2.80, 2002, www.kintecus.com.
Of course, if you are using a non-Windows Version then specify the platform (Linux, SUN,
whatever)
There are some journals that do not allow a reference
to anything as an Internet address. I suppose they fear the reference is much
too "soft" and can easily point to other unrelated sites in the future. If you
have a paper excepted in such a journal and cannot use www.kintecus.com in
your reference, then please use the following "hard" citation:
Ianni, James C. , "A Comparison of the Bader-Deuflhard
and the Cash-Karp Runge-Kutta Integrators for the GRI-MECH 3.0 Model Based on
the Chemical Kinetics Code Kintecus", pg.1368-1372, Computational Fluid and
Solid Mechanics 2003, K.J. Bathe editor, Elsevier Science Ltd., Oxford, UK.,
2003.
Enter in a gas pressure that is much larger than the gas reactant pressure ?
Go in the species description spreadsheet and enter in a
non-reactive gaseous species such as Ar (Argon) or Nitrogen (N2). The additional gaseous
species does not have to be in any chemical reaction. Now, in the Initial Concentration
field enter in a sufficiently high concentration to raise the pressure of the system. The
ideal gas equation can be used as an approximation for the initial concentration [
Concentration=n/V=P/(R*T) ]. Remember that the additional gaseous presence will contribute
to the overall heat capacity of the system and any equations containing [M] or pressure
fall-off equations.
the Graphical Interface Appear When I Run Kintecus.exe ?
The graphical interface for Kintecus is encoded inside the Excel
spreadsheet files that end in ".xls" such as
"Enzyme_Regression_Fitting.xls", "GRI_MECH_30.xls" or the blank xls
file "Kintecus_workbook.xls". Naturally, you need Excel or a program capable of
running the xls files such as SUN Microsystems' STAR OFFICE.
the results from my Excel model DO NOT exactly match the Kintecus model run
from the COMMAND line ?
Some users have notice this, and its mainly due to Excel saving
"What you see on the screen"
numbers to the temporary Kintecus files and not exactly what the cell value holds.
Example: you entered in 3.14159265E+10 in an Excel cell. After pressing <ENTER>
Excel shows 3.14E+10 in the cell, but if you click the cell, Excel now shows the full
number 3.14159265E+10 in the command line up above. You click the "RUN" button,
and temporary Kintecus files are saved, the cell holding 3.14159265E+10 is written as
3.14E+10 and NOT the full number! For some models, this is OK, but keep that in mind. If
you need Excel to write the entire value out to the last decimal place BE SURE
to first select the rows, columns or sheets containing those numbers, then under the
FORMAT menu, select the sub-menu item "Cells". A prompt will pop-open. In
the Category, select Scientific and increase the decimal places to 6, 8 or 10. Click OK.
Done.
The History of Kintecus ?
Kintecus was first developed on Amiga Computers back in 1992. It
was written on an Absoft Fortran compiler 900k diskette that also was the boot disk on an
Amiga 500 with 1 floppy disk, no hard disk, 1 meg memory. It has evolved somewhat from
1992-1995 mainly to conversion to PC's with Microsoft's really lousy and buggy Fortran
Powerstation. It was released as shareware back in 1995. It is now written in
FORTRAN77 with FORTRAN-95 and some C (mainly for accessing Window’s registry).
The deal with the name "KINTECUS" ?
Kintecus was initially named, "KINETICUS" which is
Latin for "movement". Molecules/atoms/particles have to move before they react,
so hence the name. In 1995, Kineticus was moved from the Amiga to the DOS platform which
only supports filenames of eight characters, so a letter will have to be hacked off the
name. The letter, "E" was deleted and the "I" replaced to
"E" so we get the current name "KINTECUS". The program was also
Copyrighted in 1995 under "KINTECUS", so do to legal reasons that name has been
kept.
