Optimal Temperature Tracking Control of a Polymerization Batch Reactor by Adaptive Input-Output Linearization

The tracking of a reference temperature trajectory in a polymerization batch reactor is a common problem and has critical importance because the quality control of a batch reactor is usually achieved by implementing the trajectory precisely. In this study, only energy balances around a reactor are considered as a design model for control synthesis, and material balances describing concentration variations of involved components are treated as unknown disturbances, of which the effects appear as time-varying parameters in the design model. For the synthesis of a tracking controller, a method combining the input-output linearization of a time-variant system with the parameter estimation is proposed. The parameter estimation method provides parameter estimates such that the estimated outputs asymptotically follow the measured outputs in a specified way. Since other unknown external disturbances or uncertainties can be lumped into existing parameters or considered as another separate parameters, the method is useful in practices exposed to diverse uncertainties and disturbances, and the designed controller becomes robust. And the design procedure and setting of tuning parameters are simple and clear due to the resulted linear design equations. The performances and the effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated via simulation studies.