DESIGN AND CONTROL OF TUBULAR AUTOTHERMAL REACTORS: AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

A systematic procedure for the design of a reactor system and controller for an autothermal process is proposed. Use of Structural Dominance Analysis eliminates the need for many detailed simulation runs to determine best reactor and controller configuration. Multistage wall-cooled reactors with cocurrent coolant are found to be a superior design. Reactor control is achieved using cold feed bypass gas to regulate in inlet temperature to each reactor bed. A controller is designed using the Internal Model Control structure. Performance and robustness are investigated using a first-order diagonal filter.