Nm. Iyer et Ae. Farell, DESIGN OF A STABLE ADAPTIVE NONLINEAR OBSERVER FOR AN EXOTHERMIC STIRRED-TANK REACTOR, Computers & chemical engineering, 20(9), 1996, pp. 1141-1147
A stable nonlinear adaptive observer is constructed to estimate reacta
nt composition and uncertain model parameters from temperature measure
ments in an exothermic stirred tank reactor. The construction is based
on an adaptive observer canonical formulation proposed in the literat
ure. Only a very limited class of nonlinear systems are known to be tr
ansformable to this canonical form, the exothermic reactor with first
order irreversible kinetics however reveals itself to be suitable for
the transformation. The utility of the adaptive observer is demonstrat
ed by simulations while implementing feedback linearizing control of t
he reactor in the presence of state and parametric uncertainties. (C)
1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.