Comparative Study of State Estimation of Tubular Microreactors using UKF and EKF

Microreactors, which are composed of channels with lateral dimension below 1 mm, offer many advantages over conventional reactors. Through the R&D activity, it has been recognized that a monitoring system is indispensable for realizing long-term operation of microreactors. In this research, a physical model-based monitoring system is developed to provide on-line estimates of the immeasurable process variables using nonlinear filters, in which wall temperature is used as measurement in the nonlinear filter algorithms. The developed system is applied to the detection and diagnosis of catalyst deterioration in tubular microreactors. Its usefulness is demonstrated numerically, and the estimation performance of unscented and extended Kalman filters is evaluated.