On-line Estimation of Reaction Rates in Batch Reactors

Very often one needs to know the current values of reaction rates in chemical reactors in order to control them effectively or in order to avoid unsafe operating conditions. ln this work state estimation techniques are used to estimate on-line reaction rates in well mixed isothermal batch reactors. The proposed scheme assumes the availability of on-line measurements of overall concentrations of the reactants, and the lack of knowledge on the reaction rate dependence with those concentrations. The state estimator used in this application is a Kalman filter based estimator. Relationships between the continuous and the discrete versions of the filter as well as a Laplace domain analysis were considered. The estimation scheme is applied to two examples of semi-continuous emulsion co-polymerization.