Comparative study of Time Optimal Controller with PID Controller for a Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor

Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) is the productive part in different chemical and process industries, and hence there is a need to control this process at desired optimum conditions of temperature and concentration. This paper deals with modelling and constrained control of a CSTR that minimises the processing time. Modelling consisted in performing the mass and heat balances of the CSTR system. Different controllers (time optimal, PID) were then applied to this non-linear system and compared within the boundaries of the control input and states. A theoretical case study was solved numerically using the orthogonal collocations method and simulations, resulting in a comparison of different controllers.