Early warning detection of runaway initiation using non-linear approaches

We present a method for early detection of runaway initiation in chemical reactors using only temperature measurements and based on the calculation of the divergence of the system. The method is based on state space reconstruction techniques and is illustrated using simulated as well as experimental datasets. The results show that the method is able to distinguish between runaway and non-runaway situations and it does not produce false alarms during controlled heating/cooling experiments.