The pioneer schematic ideas of Kimura and Levenspiel (Ind. Eng. Chem. Proc. Des. Dev., 16 (1977) 145 – 148) have been developed to find numerically the region of instability for adiabatic packed bed reactors. Three different cases of special industrial interest and complexity are presented. The highly exothermic gas-phase reactions: ammonia synthesis, methanol production from syn-gas, and SO₂ oxidation. Equations were parameterized and solved according to a continuation homotopy numerical method. The results showed that concentration of inerts and total pressure influences the size of the instability region.