Control of Rotating Wave Trains in a Loop Reactor

Abstract

A control strategy is proposed to stabilize thermal wave trains in networks of catalytic reactors with periodically rotated inlet and outlet ports. The implemented approach entails updating the time between two successive port rotations based on the current values of reaction-and thermal-front velocities. These latter values are estimated online by an algorithm derived from geometric analysis of the spatiotemporal temperature pattern. Guidelines for the placement of temperature sensors and controller design that enforce robust stability at regime and during startup are illustrated. The illustrated strategy is validated on a simulated problem of controlling a loop reactor for the combustion of volatile organic compounds.

Dynamics and control of loop reactors - a review

“…Figure 14 shows [3] a traveling wave simulated with N =4, n s = 3 (or n s = −1; the two cases are identical in adiabatic systems), composed of 4 fronts, traveling at V f r (the 1st front) followed by 3 thermal fronts. The authors derived [3] relations between V sw , V th and V f r that will sustain waves with a desired number of fronts.…”

“…[27], the simulations were conducted for a case of two units [15] and extended for a three-unit system in the following works [6,7,16,26]. Several studies considered a LR (or a NTW) with the feed port jumping several units in every shift [3,24,25]. Such a strategy is claimed to allow better control, since it allows to increase the switching time, as we describe below, the main properties of the LR behavior are captured with a strategy using a one-unit shift.…”

Hysteresis in autothermal methane reforming over Rh catalysts: Bifurcation analysis

“…Particularly, the implementation of parametric continuation techniques is effective to detect coexisting solution regimes (e.g. [26][27][28][29][30][31]). …”