Adaptive Strategies Applied to Automatic Startup and Control of an Exothermic Batch Reactor

This paper describes adaptive strategies applied to the automatic startup and control of a simulated batch reactor where exothermic reactions take place. The startup switching time is determined online from predictions of the future reactor temperature based on the prediction error model. Then long-range predictive control strategies are designed by incorporating the prediction error model for regulation after the desired reactor temperature is reached during startup. Simulation results are presented to show the feasibility of the proposed adaptive approach for the rapid startup and control of exothermic batch reactors.