IHMPC and POD to the control of a non-isothermal tubular reactor

This paper presents the result of applying POD (Proper Orthogonal Decomposition) and IHMPC (Infinite Horizon Model Predictive Control) to the control of a non-isothermal tubular reactor. This paper is based on a previous work of O.M. Agudelo, J.J. Espinosa, B. De Moor Control of a Tubular Chemical Reactor by means of POD and Predictive Control Techniques, in Proceedings of the European Control Conference 2007 (ECC 2007), pp. 1046–1053, Kos, Greece, 2007, where a finite horizon model predictive control and POD techniques are applied a non-isothermal tubular reactor. In this paper the control objective is to keep the operation of the reactor at a desired operating condition in spite of the disturbances in the feed flow. POD and Galerkins method are used to derive the low order linear model that captures the dominant dynamics of the PDEs, which are subsequently used for controller design. Two IHMPC formulations are constructed on the basis of the low order linear model and are demonstrated, through simulation, to achieve the control objectives.