Feedback control of a continuous-flow stirred tank reactor with competing autocatalators

Two types of nonlinear feedback control schemes are introduced and analyzed for their capability of recovering the original state of an isothermal continuous-flow stirred tank reactor with one robust cubic autocatalytic species, perturbed by a temporary disturbance of an invading cubic autocatalytic species in the inflow. The control objectives are to eliminate the invading species from the system and to restore the original state of the host species. The extent of applicability of the control design to different nonrobust invading species is studied, when the controller is tuned for a specific invader. Moreover, a time-delay feature is suggested in one of the control schemes developed to achieve the control objectives in systems with poor detection of invading species.