In this paper a globally stabilizing boundary feedback control law for an arbitrarily fine discretization of a nonlinear PDE model of a chemical tubular reactor is presented. The objective is to stabilize an unstable steady–state of the system using boundary control of temperature and concentration on the inlet side of the reactor. We discretize the original nonlinear PDE model in space using f...

A raptd flow-mlectron sandwtch enzyme immunoassay suitabIe for the direct determmatron of proteins m btoIogtcaI sampIes rs described.. ‘The proposed system utihzes fugfify active adenosme deammase-antibody coqugates m conlunctron with a flow-through unmunoreactor and an ammomum ion-sefectrve potentrometnc detector. After appropnate sampfe/.reagent mlectton steps, the enzyme actrvtty bound to th...

A model is developed for prediction of axial concentration profiles of dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide in tubular photobioreactors used for culturing microalgae. Experimental data are used to verify the model for continuous outdoor culture of Porphyridium cruentum grown in a 200-L reactor with 100-m long tubular solar receiver. The culture was carried out at a dilution rate of 0.05 h-1 appl...

Finite element or finite volume discretizations of distributed parameter systems (DPS) typically lead to high order finite dimensional systems. Model approximation is then an important first step towards the construction of optimal controllers. However, model reduction methods hardly take model uncertainties and parameter variations into account. As such, reduced order models are not well equip...

Styrene is an important monomer in the manufacture of thermoplastic. Most of it is produced by the catalytic dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene. In this process that depends on reversible reactions, the yield is usually limited by the establishment of thermodynamic equilibrium in the reactor. The styrene yield can be increased by using a hybrid process, with reaction and separation simultaneously....

BACKGROUND Microalgae are a potential source of sustainable commodities of fuels, chemicals and food and feed additives. The current high production costs, as a result of the low areal productivities, limit the application of microalgae in industry. A first step is determining how the different production system designs relate to each other under identical climate conditions. The productivity a...

A compact reformer to generate hydrogen for portable fuel cell applications is presented. This reformer is a conventional type single-path tubular reactor packed with granular catalyst particles in which steam reforming and catalytic partial oxidation reactions take place in series using a mixture of methanol and water as a feed. The novel feature of this reformer is in the interlacing of the f...