Temperature and concentration control of exothermic chemical processes in continuous stirred tank reactors

Exothermic chemical reaction taking place in continuous stirred tank reactor is considered. Heat release from the chemical reaction, non-linear dynamic behavior of the process and uncertainty in parameters are the main factors motivating the use of robust control design. Viewing temperature and molar concentration as variables both accessible in real time, PI and optimal state-feedback controllers driven by temperature and concentration error signals are proposed to regulate the system over reactor's steady-state working points by counteracting undesired disturbances. Since access to concentration value has proved beneficial for the reactor's performance, estimation techniques are examined to compensate for the problematic nature of the concentration's measurement. A linear reduced-order observer is first proposed to estimate the concentration value using temperature measurements. In addition, assuming concentration measurement is available with a relatively short delay via sample analysis, a linear and non-linear discrete-time predictor is constructed to estimate the concentration's real-time value. A linear combination of the two estimation schemes (observer, predictor) is proposed resulting in a combined estimator, in which the emphasis between the two individual schemes can be controlled via a scalar parameter. The work presented in this paper was supported by the GLOW project - New weather-stable low gloss powder coatings based on bifunctional acrylic solid resins and nanoadditives - as part of the development of novel and efficient processing technologies regarding the production of new families of powder coatings, responding to industrial requirements for quality improvement at lower cost and shorter development cycles.