Local observability and controllability of stirred tank reactors

This paper deals with the observability and controllability properties of the linearized tangent dynamic model of (bio)chemical processes in isothermal stirred tank reactors (STRs). It is shown that a necessary condition for the observability (controllability) of isothermal (bio)chemical processes is that the number of measured components (the number of control inputs) is larger than or equal to the number of process components minus the number of reactions involved in the process. This gives a simple test for detecting possible lack of observability and/or controllability of isothermal STRs.