Concept and Applications of Extents in Chemical Reaction Systems

Models of chemical reaction systems can be quite complex as they typically include information regarding the reactions, the various transfers of heat and mass, as well as the effects of the inlet and outlet flows. It is well known that a linear transformation involving the reaction stoichiometry allows artitioning the state space into a reaction invariant subspace and its complement. Alternative transformations have been proposed to partition the state space into various subspaces that are linked to the reactions, the heat and mass transfers, the inlets, and the initial conditions. This paper analyzes this partitioning of the state space, which helps isolate the effects of the various rate processes. The implications of this partitioning are discussed with respect to several modeling and estimation applications.