Dynamical analysis of a class of distributed parameter fixed bed reactors

This paper deals with the dynamical properties (observability, reachability, stabilizability, detectability) of fixed bed reactors. The class of processes considered here are plug flow reactors in which sequential reactions take place (at the exclusion of reversible reactions, and 'loop' reactions). The analysis is based on a linear distributed parameter model of the process. It is shown that the system is stable, whence detectable and stabilizable when the control inputs are the influent reactant concentrations. But it is not approximately reachable. Besides observability is studied when either the concentrations of the process components or the products of the sequential reactions' endpoints are measured at the reactor output.