Cascade control of a class of chemical reactors based on entropy production shaping*

On this contribution a cascade control for a class of continuous chemical reactors is presented. Given that the internal entropy production of the reacting systems under study can be considered as a storage function, the inner loop is designed to shape the entropy production using the outflow rate as the control variable. The tracking reference for the entropy production of the inner loop is computed by an outer loop that regulates a typical process variable such as temperature or pressure inside the reactor. In the resulting cascade control structure, the inner loop guarantees the stability of the reacting system, while the outer loop can be used to fulfil safety or operational conditions.