Dynamic and sensor fault tolerant control for an intensified heat-exchanger/reactor

•A fault-tolerant control strategy is applied to an innovative heat-exchanger/reactor.•The active fault-tolerant control method is based on adaptive observers and backstepping technique.•Both dynamic faults and sensor faults are considered for the heat-exchanger/reactor.•A backstepping control law is designed for the hear-exchanger/reactor to maintain the output temperature.•Adaptive observers are designed to detect and diagnose the fault of the proposed system. In this paper, an active fault tolerant control system is proposed and applied to a new intensified heat exchanger/reactor system. This method consists of an adaptive observer-based fault detection, isolation, and identification scheme and a control law redesign method based on the backstepping approach. The objective of the application of the fault tolerant control system is to ensure the safety and productivity of this intensified heat exchanger/reactor even in the presence of a fault. Both parameter and sensor faults are considered. The effectiveness of the fault tolerant control method based on adaptive observers is validated by simulations on the heat exchanger/reactor system.