Observer Design for a Class of Exothermal Plug-Flow Tubular Reactors

A semi-linear reduced-order state estimator is presented to reconstruct approximately the state variable initially unknown of a class of nonlinear tubular reactors models, namely the exothermal plug-flow tubular reactor involving sequential reactions for which the kinetics depends on both the temperature and the reactant concentration. Our conception is based on bounded observations and the analysis of the nonlinear set of partial differential equations. It is shown that the given observer design admits a global unique solution and ensures asymptotic state estimator with exponentially decay error, when only the temperature is available for measurement at the reactor outlet. Simulation results are also presented showing the effectiveness of the proposed observer design.