Optimal transition and robust control design for exothermic continuous reactors

✍ Scribed by Antonio Flores-Tlacuahuac; Jesús Alvarez; Enrique Saldívar-Guerra; Guillermo Oaxaca

• Publisher: American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 201 KB
• Volume: 51
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-1541
• DOI: 10.1002/aic.10345

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The problem of jointly designing the optimal steady‐state transition and the related tracking controller for a representative class of exothermic continuous chemical reactors is addressed. The combination of optimal, constructive, and conventional control ideas yields a design methodology with: the identification of the underlying solvability conditions with physical meaning, the construction of the optimal transition, a controller to robustly perform the associated tracking task, and a closed‐loop stability criterion coupled with conventional‐like tuning guidelines. The controller is driven by a temperature measurement, simultaneously manipulates the heat exchange and reactant feed rates, and its implementation does not require the chemical kinetics model. The control scheme consists of a decentralized feedforward–feedback temperature loop and a ratio‐type reactant dosage controller. The proposed transition and control design approach is illustrated with an application example treated with numerical simulations. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers; AIChE J, 51: 895–908, 2005.