The fractional Brownian motion as a model for an industrial airlift reactor

The fractional Brownian motion (fBm) was verified as a model to describe th e complex behaviour of a commercial airlift reactor. A pressure signal reco rded was analysed and predictions were made with the fBm model. It can be c oncluded that the pressure signal airlift reactor exhibits the features of the fractional Gaussian noise and not of the fBm. Modelling of the pressure signal with the fractional Gaussian noise (fGn) can be used for control pu rposes or fault diagnosis. The characteristics of the commercial airlift re actor are encountered in various reactors which shows the great potential o f the fGn to describe pressure signals in such reactors. As the variations of the pressure signal can be described by the fGn, the fBm is still a pote ntial candidate to describe variations over the longitude of the reactor. ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.