Optimal location of measurements in tubular reactors

Abstract

The optimal location of temperature measurements along the length of a non-adiabatic tubular reactor in which a first-order exothermic reaction is occurring is considered. The optimal locations are defined to be those at which the most accurate estimates of the concentration and temperature profiles in the reactor can be obtained. The problem is approached by first discretizing the reactor model equations at a certain number of collection points. The optimal sensor location problem is then posed as that of selecting a desired number of points out of the prespecified locations given by the collocation points. It is found, for the particular set of paramters considered, that the quality of state estimates obtainable can be strongly dependent on the locations of the sensors, even more so than on the number of sensors. A general theory for optimal locations of sensors in nonlinear distributed parameter systems is presented.

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