Nonlinear Adaptive LQ Control of a Tubular Chemical Reactor

The paper deals with one possible control method of a tubular chemical reactor. The procedure is based on the decomposition of the controller on a nonlinear static part and an adaptive linear dynamic part. Derivation of the nonlinear static part uses inversion and subsequent polynomial approximation of simulated or measured steady-state characteristics of the reactor. The nonlinear part of the closed-loop composed of the nonlinear static part of the controller and nonlinear model of the reactor is then approximated by an external linear model with parameters recursively estimated via a corresponding delta model. The control law is obtained using the linear quadratic control theory.