Robust temperature regulation in chemical reactors with unknown reaction rates

In this work we study the stabilization of continuous stirred tank reactor with unknown reaction rates. We prove that, under certain general assumptions, the chemical reactor can be stabilized with a high-gain feedback. Simulations shows that high-gain feedback may lead to hard input saturation and poor closed-loop performance. A reaction rate uncertainty estimator is introduced which, when coupled with a nonlinear feedback, leads to global stability with acceptable control performance. We conclude state observation is unnecessary for the stabilization of the class of chemical reactors here considered.