Nonlinear tracking and input disturbance rejection with application to pH control

This paper presents a nonlinear observer-based controller configuration for a class of nonlinear single-input single-output systems with certain observability and stability properties. Particular attention is paid to the effect of input disturbances typically present in chemical processes. It is pointed out that conventional feedback linearizing internal model controllers reject output disturbances linearly, but that they can experience significant performance degradation in the presence of input disturbances. This problem is shown to originate in the lack of the linear superposition property. It is proven that the proposed control architecture rejects constant input disturbances from the control signal and then recovers linear reference tracking. The convenient tuning and improved performance are illustrated for pH neutralization.