I nd. Eng. Chem. Res.

1989, 28, 1177-1184 1177

siderable degree of leeway regarding conditions of fluctu-
ating temperature and flow rate. I n addition, the dual-
catalyst concept would be applicable to other reaction
systems in which competing reactions, e.g., partial and total
oxidation, result in the conversion versus temperature
curve going through a maximum.
Phillibert, N. G. An Investigation of Copper Mordenite Catalyst for
the Reduction of Nitric Oxide with Ammonia. M.S. Thesis, The
Univeristy of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1985.
Pruce, L. M. Reducing NO, Emmissions at the Burner, in the Fur-
naces, and after Combustion. Power 1981, 125(1), 33-40.
Yamaguchi, M.; Matsushita, K,; Takami, K. R~~~~~NO, from
HNOB Tail Gas. Hydrocarbon Process. 1976,55(8), 101-106.
Registry No. NO, 10102-43-9; NH,, 7664-41-7.
Li terature Cited
Nam, I. S. Experimental Studies and Theoretical Modeling of Cat-
alyst Deactivation. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Mas-
sachusetts at Amherst, 1983.
Received f or review May 31, 1988
Revised manuscript received March 29, 1989
Accepted May 2, 1989
PROCESS ENGI NEERI NG AND DESIGN
Temperature Control of Exothermic Batch Reactors Using Generic
Model Control
Barry J. Cott and Sandro Macchi etto*
Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology, Imperial College of Science, Technology and
Medicine, South Kensington, London SW7 2AY, England
A new model-based controller for the initial heat-up and subsequent temperature maintenance of
exothermic batch reactors is presented. The controller was developed by using the Generic Model
Control framework of Lee and Sullivan, which provides a rigorous and effective way of incorporating
a nonlinear energy balance model of the reactor and the heat-exchange apparatus into the controller.
It also allows the use of the same control algorithm for both heat-up and temperature maintenance,
thereby eliminating the need to switch between two separate control algorithms as is the case with
todays more commonly used strategies. A deterministic on-line estimator is used to determine the
amount and rate of heat released by the reaction. This information is, in turn, utilized to determine
the change in jacket temperature setpoint in order to keep the reaction temperature on its desired
trajectory. The performance of the new GMC-based controller is compared to that of the commonly
used dual-mode controller. Simulation studies show the new controller to be as good as the dud-mode
controller for a nominal case for which both controllers are well tuned. However, the new controller
is shown to be much more robust with respect to changes in process parameters and to model
mismatch.
1. I ntroduction
The initial heat-up from ambient temperature and the
subsequent temperature control of exothermic batch re-
actors have always proved to be a difficult control problem
(Shinskey, 1979). Because the amount of heat released as
the reaction mixture is heated up can become very large
very quickly, the reaction may become unstable and cause
the temperature to run away if the heat generated exceeds
the cooling capacity of the reactor. This runaway can
obviously cause great risk to plant personnel and equip-
ment and can, even in the best case, result in a loss of the
batch. Therefore, careful control of the rate of change of
the reactor temperature and minimization of the tem-
perature overshoot is required. On the other hand, from
a production point of view, the heat-up should be done as
quickly as possible in order to reduce the overall cycle time
of the reaction process. Therefore, any control strategy
for heat-up must balance the needs of production with
those of safety and quality.
Traditionally, the problem has been approached through
the use of open-loop control theory to establish, a priori,
0888-58851891 2628-1 177$01.50/0
the optimal temperature profiles and of standard feedback
control algorithms to achieve these profiles. The control
actions needed to bring the reactor contents to the desired
setpoint were obtained by solving an optimal control
problem with the objective of minimizing the time to reach
the setpoint (Shinskey, 1979). The resulting strategies are
of the on-off or bang-bang type and consist in applying
maximum heating until the reactor temperature is within
a specified number of degrees of the setpoint and then
switching to maximum cooling to bring the rate of tem-
perature change to zero when the temperature has reached
its final desired setpoint. At this point, standard feedback
controllers can be switched on and used to maintain the
temperature. The most commonly used strategy of this
type in industry is the dual-mode controller of Shinskey
and Weinstein (1965), which uses a standard PID con-
troller for maintaining temperature.
The main problem with approaches of this type is that
the optimal switching criterion from heating to cooling,
usually based on the reactor temperature, is determined
a priori and is therefore only valid for a specific range of
0 1989 American Chemical Society
1178 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989
operating conditions. Because heat-up proceeds in an
open-loop manner and no feedback from the reactor is
used, there is no allowance for modeling errors or for
changes in process parameters. The net result is that these
strategies lack robustness, and any deviation in the op-
erating conditions from those used to tune the controller
may result in significantly poorer control performance.
The use of adaptive control algorithms would appear to
offer promising solutions to this problem, and there have
been several attempts in this direction. A recent paper
by Cluett et al. (1985) is typical of these attempts. They
used a single adaptive control algorithm for both heat-up
and temperature maintenance but found that the algor-
ithm did not handle the sharp change from the heat-up
mode to the temperature maintenance mode very well.
They state that adaptation during the heat-up mode
misleads the operation of the adaptive system and find
that, in practice, fully adaptive strategies give poor per-
formance. In the end, they effectively revert back to a
dual-mode approach, where the PI D controller is simply
replaced by an adaptive controller just for the temperature
maintenance part of the profile. Therefore, the robustness
concerns of Shinskeys dual-mode controllers also apply
to this controller.
A more encouraging strategy was proposed by J utan and
Uppal (1984), who used a model-based approach to esti-
mate the current amount of heat being released in the
reactor at any given moment in time. This information
was used in a feedforward control structure designed to
counterbalance the effect of the heat released. In order
to compensate for modeling errors and for the lack of a
precise estimate of the heat released, they combined the
feedforward controller with a feedback controller. Al-
though this approach overcomes many of the problems of
the open-loop strategies, the control performance reported
by the authors could be improved further. The reactor is
not smoothly delivered to the desired temperature, and
there is the presence of significant overshoot in the reactor
temperature. These effects may be attributed to the lin-
earization necessary to implement the feedback control
action and to the manner in which the feedforward and
feedback effects are added.
This paper presents a new model-based controller design
for the heat-up and temperature maintenance of exo-
thermic batch reactors, which is derived from the Generic
Model Control (GMC) algorithm of Lee and Sullivan
(1988) and which uses the on-line heat-released estimation
concept of J utan and Uppal (1984). GMC has several
advantages that make it a good framework for developing
reactor controllers:
1. The process model appears directly in the control
algorithm.
2. The process model does not need to be linearized
before use, allowing for the inherent nonlinearity of exo-
thermic batch reactor operation to be taken into account.
3. By design, GMC provides feedback control of the rate
of change of the controlled variable. This suggests that
the rate of temperature change, which as mentioned above
is very important in heat-up operations, can be used di-
rectly as a control variable.
4. The relationship between feedforward and feedback
control is explicitly stated in the GMC algorithm.
5. Finally and importantly, the GMC framework per-
mits us to develop a control algorithm that can be used
for both heat-up and temperature maintenance and
therefore eliminates the need for a switching criterion
between different algorithms; this should result in a much
more robust control strategy.
The paper will begin by outlining the details of the GMC
controller design and the on-line method used for esti-
mating the current heat released. The designs of the
controller and the heat-released estimator are general in
nature and applicable in principle to the temperature
control of any exothermic and even endothermic batch
reaction systems. A specific reaction/reactor example is
presented to demonstrate the tuning and nominal per-
formance of the GMC controller. I n order to provide a
comparison for the GMC controller, the design of a
dual-mode controller is then presented and implemented
on the same reactor system. Finally, the performance of
the two strategies is compared with respect to changes in
process conditions and modeling errors, and the robustness
of both controllers is evaluated.
2. Generic Model Controller Design
2.1. Control Algorithm Formulation. The formula-
tion of a Generic Model Controller for temperature control
of exothermic batch reactors is quite straightforward.
GMC requires a dynamic model of the process written in
standard state variable form. The controller is formulated
by solving the dynamic process model for the derivative
of the controlled variable, x , and letting it equal what is,
in effect, a proportional integral term operating on the
difference between the current value of x and its desired
value, xsP. Hence, the GMC control algorithm can be
written as
dx/dt =K,(x-x) +K2 ( x P - X ) dt (1)
s,
where K, and Kz are tuning constants. For temperature
control of a batch reactor, a process model relating the
reactor temperature, TI, to the manipulated variable, the
jacket temperature, Tj, is required. Assuming that the
amount of heat retained in the walls of the reactor is small
in comparison with the heat transferred in the rest of the
system, an energy balance around the reactor contents
gives the required model:
dTI
Q +uA(Tj - 71)
(2)
where W is the weight of the reactor contents, C, is the
mass heat capacity of the reactor contents, U is the
heat-transfer coefficient, A is the heat-transfer area, and
Q is the heat released by the reaction. W and Cp are
assumed to be constant at this point. Replacing TI for x
and T:P for xsP in eq 1, combining eq 1 and 2, and finally
solving for the manipulated variable, Tj, we obtain the
GMC controller:
_ - -
dt WCP
WCP
Tj =T, +-(K1(T:P - TI) +
UA
Tj gives the jacket temperature trajectory required so
that the reactor temperature, I,, follows the desired tra-
jectory defined by the values of the GMC constants, K1
and Kz.
As written, eq 3 gives the continuous form of the GMC
algorithm. I n order to use GMC in a discrete system, the
integral must be evaluated numerically using the ap-
proximation
where At is the sampling frequency of the controller.
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989 1179
ermined for each new system. J uba and Hamer used this
approach with good success on their pilot plant reactors.
In addition, they point out that the heat-released estimator
could easily be formulated as a Kalman filter in order to
improve the estimates by making use of the structure of
the noise model. Indeed, a recent paper by de Valligre and
Bonvin (1989) demonstrate the effectiveness of using
nonlinear Kalman filters in the estimation of the heat
released.
I n this work, the second approach, the deterministic
on-line energy balance, was used because it is the most
general of the three approaches and therefore is most ap-
propriate for the generality of the controller formulation.
We minimize the problems of unknown process parameters
by choosing to estimate Q/ UA rather than Q itself. By
solving for Q/UA, the number of parameters needed to
be determined is minimized to the single group, WC,/ UA.
I n addition, WC,/UA is the only parameter left in the
GMC control algorithm of eq 5, so effectively one param-
eter characterizes both the estimator and the controller.
To develop the estimator, eq 2 is solved for Q/UA to
give
Therefore, the discrete time version of eq 3 is
Ti@) =TI(k) +
Equation 5 gives not the jacket temperature setpoint,
T;p@), but the actual jacket temperature, Tj(k), needed at
the next time interval to move the reactor temperature
toward its setpoint, T:P. If Tj (k) were used directly as the
setpoint, then, because the dynamics of the jacket are not
accounted for in eq 5, the resulting control would be
sluggish. Therefore, some form of dynamic compensation
of Tj ( k) must be used. If the dynamics of the jacket are
assumed to be first order (a reasonable assumption given
the findings of Liptak (1986)), then a difference equation
can be used
At(TjBP(k) - T.(k-l))
T j
(6)
where T~ is the estimated time constant of the jacket. The
jacket temperature setpoint, TrP, can be obtained by sim-
ply rearranging eq 6. Therefore, the following dynamic
compensator is obtained:
Tj(k) =T,'k-l' + 1
1
Tj(Tj(k) - T.ck-1))
At
(7)
The solution of eq 5 and 7 gives the actual setpoint value
for the jacket temperature controller to be used for the
next control interval.
2.2. On-Line Estimation of the Heat Released for
the GMC Controller. The success of the GMC temper-
ature controller is largely dependent on our ability to
measure, estimate, or predict the heat released, Q, at any
given period in time. There are three main techniques of
estimating Q on-line as discussed by J uba and Hamer
(1986): 1. direct use of detailed kinetic models; 2. det-
erministic on-line energy balances; and 3. empirical
heat-released estimators.
For most reaction systems of industrial interest, the first
approach often proves not to be feasible because of the lack
of good kinetic models. I n a rapidly changing business
such as fine chemicals, there often is not enough time or
financial benefit in carrying our detailed kinetic studies
of the reactions.
Deterministic on-line energy balances can also have
drawbacks. The largest problem is often the assumption
that the heat held in the reactor walls is small. If the heat
capacity of the reactor walls is not small, then a deter-
ministic energy balance requires the solution of a system
of coupled differential equations with several unobservable
states such as the wall temperatures (J uba and Hamer,
1986). Furthermore, the number of process parameters
increases, and there may be difficulty in obtaining good
estimates for all of them.
I n their paper, J uba and Hamer use an empirically de-
veloped discrete-time transfer-function model of the re-
actor. The model was determined experimentally by sim-
ulating heat generation by the injection of steam into a
reactor full of water. They then use time series analysis
to develop a transfer function relating the reactor tem-
perature to the jacket inlet temperature and the heat
generation. The model is then inverted to obtain an es-
timate of the heat released. This method has the advan-
tage of accounting for all the dynamics of the reactor, but
it has the disadvantage that the resulting model is specific
to the given reaction/reactor system and must be redet-
TjBp(k) =T.(k-U + 1
1
Although the reactor temperature, T,, and the jacket
temperature, Tj , are available through direct measurement,
the derivative of the reactor temperature must be esti-
mated on-line from the direct measurements of T,. This
can often be difficult because numerical differentiation is
very sensitive to measurement errors. The performance
of the estimator can be dramatically improved by using
a high-order difference equation for calculating the de-
rivative and by using low-pass filters on the measurements
used in the estimator to remove the high-frequency noise.
I n this work, we use a three-term difference equation
(J ennings, 1964) and exponential filters with time con-
stants of 1 min on both the temperature measurements
and the estimate of Q/ UA. These filters were only used
for estimation; the measured signals of T, and Tj were still
used directly in the GMC control equation.
The full description of the estimator then becomes
(9)
WC, dT1Jk)
UA dt
( Q/ UA) ( k) =- - +TrJ k) - TjJk)
(12)
where the superscript f indicates the filtered value of T,,
Tj, or QIUA.
The estimator described by eq 9-13 can be applied to
any reaction/reactor system by changing the parameters
W, C,, U, and A to reflect the system. Further simplifi-
cations of the estimator are possible. For example, it is
often possible, given the reactor dimensions and the den-
sity of the reaction mixture, to develop a relationship
between Wand A. So, if the jacket only surrounds the side
1180 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989
Hot
Cold
TC - TemperatureConnol
W - Weight
Figure 1. Batch reactor schematic diagram.
of a cylindrically shaped reactor, as shown in Figure 1, the
relationship of W/ A is given as
w pirr2h p r
(14)
A 2irrh 2
where p is the density of the reaction mixture, r is the
radius of the reactor, and h is the height of the reactor
mixture. Therefore, the expression for We,/ UQ can be
replaced, for this special case, by,
- =- - _ -
we, CpPr
(15)
UA 2U
The determination of the value of We, / UA to be used
in the estimator and controller depends on whether any
of these parameters change significantly over the course
of the reaction. If they change very little, We, / UA may
often be determined simply by performing an open-loop
step test for the jacket temperature setpoint with a cold
charge. At these low temperatures, the reaction rate is
practically zero, and eq 2 shows that, when there is no heat
released, WC, / UA is merely the time constant of the
system. If any of the values change significantly over the
course of the reaction, further tests may have to be per-
formed to characterize these changes in We, / UA.
I t should be noted that the structure of the estimator
obtained in eq 9-13 is very similar to the structure of the
empirically derived estimator of J uba and Hamer. They
are both low-order difference equations and are based on
similar plant measurements. If, for some reason, the ap-
proach of J uba and Hamer was preferred for a given ap-
plication, the empirical estimator would simply replace eq
-- --
9-13.
3. Reactor Simulation
The reactor simulation used in this work is largely based
on a dynamic model developed for the Warren Springs
Laboratory (Pulley, 1986). A well-mixed, liquid-phase
reaction system is considered, in which two reactions are
modeled:
reaction 1
A +B - C
reaction 2
A +C - D
Component C is the desired product while D is an un-
wanted byproduct, and the general operating objective is
to achieve a good conversion of C while minimizing the
production of D. Extensive optimization of the reactor
conditions was presented in the original reference.
The heat- and mass-transfer rates in the reactor are
assumed to be high enough so that the system is essentially
reaction rate limited. Therefore, the rate of production
of C and D is only dependent on the reactant concentra-
tions:
where R1 and R2 are the rates of production of C and D,
respectively, and MA, MB, and Mc are the number of moles
of components A, B, and C present in the reactor at any
given time. The rate constants, kl and k2, are dependent
on the reaction temperature through the Arrhenius rela-
tion. Both reactions have a large heat of reaction (AHl =
-41 840 kJ /kmol, AH2 =-25 105 kJ /kmol), which makes
the overall reaction system strongly exothermic.
Heating and cooling of the reactor contents is performed
through the use of a single-pass jacket system. The values
of the physical parameters of the reactor such as volume,
heat-transfer coefficients, and area were based on the
dimensions of the batch reactor presented by Luyben
(1973). Control of the jacket temperature is provided by
a temperature controller on the jacket inlet stream. The
heat exchangers needed to control this temperature are not
modeled but are accounted for by basing the time constant
of the jacket temperature response on typical figures given
by Liptak (1986). Figure 1 presents a diagram of the
reactor system.
Simulation work by Pulley (1986) indicates that an in-
itial charge that is equimolar in A and B produces the
greatest yield of C. Therefore, assuming the density of the
reaction mixture is that of water and given the dimensions
of the Luyben reactor, the nominal charge to the reactor
was assumed to be 360 kg of A and 1200 kg of B. Fur-
thermore, given some cost function, Pulley determined that
the optimal isothermal reaction temperature typically fell
in the range 90.0-100.0 "C, so the final reaction temper-
ature was set to 95.0 "C. Finally, the jacket temperature
was assumed to be limited to the range 20.0-120.0 "C due
to the heat-exchanger capacities, and the reaction mixture
was assumed to be at 20.0 "C at time 0.
Because measurement errors are always present when
working with real equipment, these were included in the
simulation by adding noise to all temperature measure-
ments. In order to use an appropriate noise model, time
series analysis was used to determine the noise models for
several temperature indicators on the pilot plants at Im-
perial College. A first-order moving average noise model
was found to fi t the majority of these temperature indi-
cators and was therefore used in this work.
A full description of the reactor system and the values
of the parameters used is given in the Appendix.
4. Comparison of GMC wi th Tradi ti onal Control
Strategies
4.1. Dual-Mode Control. To provide a standard with
which to compare the performance of the GMC controller,
the commonly used dual-mode controller (DM controller)
was implemented. As mentioned in section 1, dual-mode
control is an example of an open-loop heat-up controller
followed by closed-loop feedback controller to maintain
temperature. It was originally developed by Shinskey and
Weinstein (1965) and further discussed by Liptak (1986).
The DM controller consists of a sequence of control ac-
tions, each one carried out after the reactor has reached
a certain condition. The sequence of actions is as follows:
1. Full heating is applied (jacket temperature setpoint,
TjsP, set to its maximum value) until the reactor temper-
A
- 1E
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989 1181
I I I l 1 1 1 l 1 1 I l
Min TjJ
, ,
T i
Jacket Temperature Setpoint Reactor Temperature
.-----*.
Figure 2. Relationship of dual-mode controller constants.
Table I. Constants Used in Dual-Made Controller
~
E, =4.0 "C
TD-1 =2.5 min
PL =50.0 "C
TD-2 =2.0 min
K, =26.25 "C jacket/"C reactor
rI =2.75 min
rD =0.406 min
At =0.2 min
ature, T,, is within E,,, degrees of the desired reactor tem-
perature, T:P.
2. Full cooling (jacket temperature setpoint set to its
minimum value) is then applied for TD-1 minutes.
3. The setpoint of the jacket temperature controller is
then set to PL, the preload temperature for TD-2 minutes.
4. A reactor temperature controller, typically a PI D
type, is cascaded to the jacket temperature controller and
its setpoint set to T:p.
When properly tuned, the dual-mode controller is op-
timal (i.e., it brings the reactor contents to setpoint in
minimum time given the constraints of the heat-transfer
system) as maximum heating is applied for as long as
possible and then full cooling is applied to bring the reactor
temperature to its new setpoint with no overshoot and a
rate of change of zero. Figure 2 presents the relationship
between the seven dual-mode control parameters. As-
suming that the jacket temperature controller is considered
separately, there are a total of seven tuning constants to
be determined for the DM controller (Em, PL, TD-1, TD-2,
and the PI D constants of the reaction temperature con-
troller, K,, 71, and 7 ~ ) .
The DM controller was tuned in the following manner.
First, the PI D controller was tuned by performing an
open-loop step response test on the jacket temperature
controller. Its setpoint was changed from 20 to 30 "C when
f i ed with a normal charge, and a first-order-with-deadtime
model was fitted to the response. The Cohen and Coon
tuning rules were then applied to yield the values of K,,
T ~ , and TD. Second, the remaining four constants were
determined by running a series of simulations. After each
simulation run, the performance of the DM controller was
analyzed, and the values of the parameters were changed
using the rules outlined by Liptak (1986) in an attempt
to improve the controller's performance.
After five tuning runs, the response in Figure 3 was
obtained, while Table I gives the final values of the tuning
constants used. I t can be seen that the DM controller
performs very well in this nominal case. The reactor
temperature is delivered to the desired setpoint with no
over- or undershoot and the transition between the
open-loop heat-up mode and the PI D control mode is
achieved without any disruption. The vigorous changes
in the jacket temperature setpoint are caused by the high
gains used in the PI D controllers and the noisy reactor
temperature measurements. This could be reduced by
filtering the reactor temperature before using it in the PID
"1' /I
2 8 1 ' l ! / I I I , I I I I ,
0 10 28 38 48 59 b8 18 88 98 180 118 128
TI ME (mi n)
Figure 3. Dual-mode controller response for nominal operation.
In tuning the GMC controller, because overshoot was
undesirable, 5 was set to 10.0. The value of T was obtained
by examining the tuning charts given by Lee and Sullivan
and recognizing that, with f =10.0, the controlled variable
should cross the setpoint at approximately 0.257. There-
fore, to achieve a performance similar to the dual-mode
controller, T was set to 80.0 min.
Figure 5 presents the control performance of the GMC
controller for the nominal case using these tuning constants
1182 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989
lZ81- -1
0 18 28 3 8 4 8 58 b 8 78 88 98 188 118 128
TIME (mi nl
Figure 5. Generic Model Controllers response for nominal opera-
tion.
Table 11. Constants Used in GMC Controller
=10.0 r =0.5 m
p =1000 kg/m3
T~ =1.0 min
At =0.2 min
7 =80.0 min
C, =1.8828 kJ /(kg "C)
U =0.6807 kW/(m2 "C)
and the others listed in Table 11. For this nominal case,
it was assumed that the value of WC,/UA was known
precisely. This assumption will be relaxed in the next
section. I t can be seen that GMC provides performance
similar to that of the DM controller but with less drastic
changes in the jacket temperature setpoint, especially as
the reactor temperature approaches the setpoint value.
Furthermore, the GMC controller provides all the control
actions from heat-up to temperature maintenance without
having to change control algorithms. The only drawback
of the GMC appears to be the existence of a small amount
of offset. Theoretical studies of the GMC controller by
Lee and Sullivan show that this offset will eventually be
eliminated and the desired temperature will eventually be
reached.
Again, the relatively vigorous movements of the jacket
temperature setpoint after the setpoint has been reached
is caused by the use of noisy temperature measurements
directly in the GMC controller and could be reduced by
the introduction of low-pass filters.
5. Robustness Evaluation
5.1. Robustness Tests. The previous section shows
that both the DM controller and GMC controller effec-
tively control the reactor temperature for the nominal
operation for which they were tuned. However, it is im-
portant to examine the robustness aspects of both con-
trollers with respect to changes in operating and process
parameters and with respect to model mismatch. This
becomes especially important for exothermic batch reactor
as the reactor must always be operated safely in spite of
these changes.
A full robustness analysis of the Generic Model Control
formulation is beyond the scope of this paper. Lee and
Sullivan discuss the effects of simple linear model mis-
match in their original paper, but the extension of these
results to the nonlinear batch reactor system is not simple.
Therefore, we decided to investigate the robustness
properties of the two controllers through simulation
studies.
Five tests were made in which the two controllers, tuned
for the nominal operation, were used to control an oper-
ation where some of the conditions have changed from
their nominal value. The first simply involved changing
the overall amount of the charge from the nominal 1560
4 8
30
Se t p o i nt
Dual Mode
2 8 1 I I I , I , I , I ,
0 18 28 38 4 0 50 b0 70 88 98 100 118 120
TIME (mi nl
Figure 6. Responses of controllers for weight change.
kg to 1300 kg. I t represents a change in operating con-
ditions that could be caused by a deliberate change in
product demand or an accidental failure of the charging
system. The second test involves the reduction of the
heat-transfer coefficient from its nominal value to one 25%
less. This test simulates a change in heat transfer that
could be expected due to fouling of the heat-transfer
surfaces. The third tests the robustness of the controllers
in the face of change in the reaction chemistry. As stated
by J uba and Hamer (1986), the sensitivity of a given
control strategy to variations in reaction chemistry is of
great importance. In this case, the reaction rate of the first
reaction was increased to about 1.5 times the original rate.
This is also equivalent to the presence of unmodeled re-
actions. The fourth case combined the last two pertur-
bations in the operation, the decrease in the heat-transfer
coefficient and the increase in reaction rate. In each of
these four cases, the changes in operating or process pa-
rameters all push the reaction system closer to instability,
especially the fourth case, and therefore provide good tests
of controller robustness. The fifth and final case involved
using the same controllers to control an endothermic rather
than exothermic reactor. This case represents an extreme
case of model mismatch where the sign of the heat released
has actually been reversed.
5.2. Weight Change. Figure 6 shows the responses for
both the DM controller and the GMC controller. I t can
be seen that the performance of the DM controller is de-
graded while that of the GMC controller has remained
essentially the same as that for the nominal case. The
reason for the DM controller degradation is that the value
of E,,, is specified for a full reactor. On a partly filled
reactor as is the case here, cooling does not have to be
applied as early since there is less thermal inertia.
Therefore, cooling is applied as if the reactor were full and
hence the undershoot of the reactor temperature. GMC,
on the other hand, can account for changes in W directly
in the model and therefore does not have to be retuned
for each set of conditions. This is a great benefit whenever
batch sizes change frequently as a result of changing
product demands.
5.3. Heat-Transfer Coefficient Change. Figure 7
gives the responses of both controllers in response to a
changed heat-transfer coefficient, U. This change tests
the performance of the controllers in light of a change in
unmeasured parameters. Therefore, in this test, the GMC
controller is used with its original estimate of U. Although
both controllers show a change in performance, the per-
formance of the DM controller has degraded much further
than that of the GMC controller. In this test, the value
of E, for the DM controller is too small and full cooling
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989 1183
I---- GHC 1
E 1 0 2 0 30 4 0 5 e b a 7 0 8 0 90 1 0 8 iie 120
TIME ( mi n)
Figure 7. Responses of controllers for heat-transfer coefficient
change.
S etpo i nt
Dual Mode
. . . . . . . . . .
0 10 20 3 0 4 0 5 0 bB 7 0 80 90 100 110 120
TIME ( mi n)
Figure 8. Responses of controllers for reaction rate change.
is begun too late to prevent the reactor temperature from
overshooting, because heat can no longer be transferred
at as high a rate as in the nominal case. Furthermore, after
the maximum reactor temperature has been reached (98.61
"C for DM control, 96.66 "C for GMC), the GMC controller
returns the reactor back to setpoint in a much smoother
and quicker manner than the DM controller. This situa-
tion represents a much more dangerous operation than the
previous one, because an overshoot in temperature brings
the system much closer to instability.
5.4. Reaction Rate Change. The results of the third
test are given in Figure 8. Once again, it can be seen that
the DM controller's performance has again deteriorated
by changing the reaction rate. The maximum reactor
temperature has risen to 101.20 "C. On the other hand,
the GMC controller's performance has changed very little
when compared with the nominal response. The im-
provement in performance is provided by the on-line
heat-released estimator as it can predict the speed at which
heat is being released in the reactor.
5.5. Heat-Transfer Coefficient and Reaction Rate
Change. Figure 9 shows the performance of the two
controllers for a case when the reaction rate increases as
well as the heat-transfer coefficient decreases. This is the
most strenuous of the four tests, as both changes force the
reactor system toward instability. From Figure 9, i t can
be seen that the DM controller has not prevented a tem-
perature runaway in this case, whereas the performance
of the GMC controller is approximately the same as in
Figure 7, where only the heat-transfer coefficient had
changed. Therefore, this case confirms the result that the
GMC controller is much more robust than the DM con-
troller and, therefore, will provide not only better control
ise,
4 e bel
I
/
2 0 ( ' i I I I , , I , I ,
e 1 0 z e 38 4 8 58 b e 7 8 B B 9 e l e e i i ~ 128
TIME hi nl
Figure 9. Responses of controllers for combined changes.
110
............................ .*----"*.
i m ]
SETPOINT
[ ---- GMC I
0 10 2 0 30 4 8 50 b 0 70 88 9 0 100 1 1 0 120
TIME (mi n)
Figure 10. Responses of controllers for endothermic reaction.
performance but also increase the safety of operation.
5.6. Application to an Endothermic Reaction. As
a final demonstration of the robustness of the new con-
troller, the reactor simulation was modified so that the
reaction carried out was endothermic rather than exo-
thermic, while still using the nominal controllers. The new
heats of reaction used were +20 920 kJ /kmol for the first
reaction and +16736 kJ /kmol for the second. Although,
as expected, the dual-mode controller's performance suffers
greatly, as seen in Figure 10, the GMC controller's per-
formance has remained consistent. The overall response
of the GMC controller is slightly slower when compared
to the nominal case, but this is largely due to the fact that
the jacket temperature setpoint is constrained at 120 "C,
and therefore the amount of heat transfer is limited. The
ability of the GMC controller to handle such extreme
model mismatch is due to the generality in its formulation.
6. Conclusions
A model-based control strategy using the Generic Model
Control algorithm was developed and applied to the
heat-up and subsequent temperature control in an exo-
thermic batch reactor. GMC provides a method in which
nonlinear feedforward and feedback effects can be com-
bined properly. In the nominal case, the resulting con-
troller has been shown to provide similar performance to
a well-tuned dual-mode controller. However, the new
controller is much more robust with respect to changes in
measurable and unmeasured process parameters. Fur-
thermore, because the GMC controller works directly on
the rate of the change of the jacket temperature, the ad-
ditional protective rate of change constraint control stra-
tegies such as those described by Liptak (1986) are un-
necessary.
1184 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1989
Acknowledgment
k , =exp(kll - kI2/(T,' +273.15))
B.J.C. thanks the Association of Commonwealth Univ-
ersities for financial support in the form of a Common-
wealth Scholarship.
Nomenclature
Cp =mass heat capacity of reactor contents, kJ /(kg "C)
C,,$=molar heat capacity of component i , kJ /(kmol "C)
AH, =heat of reaction for reaction i, kJ /kmol
At =sampling frequency of GMC controller, s
E, =approach temperature difference for dual-mode con-
h =height of reactor, m
Kl =GMC controller constant 1
K2 =GMC controller constant 2
K, =dual-mode controller PID gain, "C jacket/"C reactor
k, =rate constant for reaction i, kmol-' s-l
k,' =rate constant 1 for reaction i
ki2 =rate constant 2 for reaction i
Mi =number of moles of component i , kmol
MW, =molecular weight of component i , kg/kmol
PL =preload temperature of dual-mode controller, "C
Q =heat released in reactor, kW
p =density of reactor contents, kg/m3
r =radius of reactor, m
R, =reaction rate of reaction i , kmol/s
T =temperature, "C
T =first-order time constant (s) or GMC tuning constant
t =time, s
TD =dual-mode controller PID derivative time, s
TD-1 =length of time full cooling is applied in dual-mode
TD-2 =length of time preload is applied in dual-mode con-
r1 =dual-mode controller PID integral time, s
U =heat-transfer coefficient of reactor, kW/ (m2 "C)
V =volume, m3
W =reactor weight, kg
x =controlled variable
Subscripts
1 =reaction 1 (A +B - C )
2 =reaction 2 (A +C - D)
A =component A
B =component B
C =component C
D =component D
f =filter
j =jacket
r =reactor
Superscripts
' =actual value before addition of measurement noise
( k ) =at the kth time interval
sp =setpoint
Appendix: Batch Reactor Model
troller, "C
controller, s
troller, s
=GMC tuning constant
Equations:
dn/i,/dt =-R1- R2
k2 =exp(k21- kZ2/ ( Tr' +273.15))
W =MWAMA +MWBMB +MWcMc +MWflD
Mr =MA +MB +Mc +MD
cpr =( c p ~ ~ A +cpBMB +Cp$C +Cp&D)/Mr
v = w/p
A =2 V / r
Qj =UA( Tj' - Tr' )
Q, =-AHlR1- AH2R2
dT,' Qr +Qj
dt MrCpI
-- --
dTJ ' FjpjCpJCTj"P - Tj') - Qj
--
-
dt VjpjCpJ
T, =T,' + - 0.866~(~-"
where dk) is normally distributed with oa =0.1 "C
T. =T.' +a(k) - 0.866a(k-')
J J
where dk) is normally distributed with ua =0.1 "C.
Physical Properties and Process Data. MWA =30
kg/kmol, MWB =100 kg/kmol, MWc =130 kg/kmol,
MWD =160 kg/kmol, C,, =75.31 kJ /(kmol "C), Cp, =
167.36 kJ /(kmol "C), C =217.57 kJ /(kmol "C), C, =
334.73 kJ /(kmol "C), kF =20.9057, k12 =10000, kzf =
38.9057, k22 =17000, AHl =-41840 kJ /kmol, AH2 =
-25 105 kJ /kmol, p =1000 kg/m3, r =0.5 m, U =0.6807
kW/(m2 "C), pj =1000 kg/m3, CpJ =1.8828 kJ /(kg "C),
Fj =0.0058 kg/s, and Vj =0.6912 m3.
Initial Conditions at t =0. MAo =12 kmol, MBo=12
kmol, Mco =0 kmol, MDo=0 kmol, T,O =20 "C, and TjO
=20 "C.
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Received f or review July 12, 1988
Accepted J anuary 3, 1989