Adaptive λ-tracking controller for an exothermic chemical plug flow tubular reactor

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the tracking of a prespecified profile temperature for exothermic chemical tubular reactor whose dynamics is described by a set of nonlinear partial differential equations where the state variables are the reactor temperature and the reactant concentration. The coolant temperature, the inlet temperature and the inlet concentration are considered as control actions. For practical reasons, it is preferable to consider a non distributed control law to achieve the control objective. In contrast to our previous work that considers fully distributed control actions where the three control inputs are assumed to be distributed along the reactor, here the last two control inputs are applied at the reactor inlet and only the coolant temperature is distributed along the reactor. We show that the temperature of the reactor tends asymptotically to a ball of arbitrary prescribed radius , centred at the given temperature profile.