PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol. 22, Nos. 1 & 2, pp. 201–218, 2004 Feedback Regulation of Temperature in FCC Regenerator Reactors Ricardo Aguilar 1, * and Rafael Maya-Yescas 2 1 Departamento de Energı´a, Universidad Auto´noma Metropolitana, Me´xico, D.F., Me´xico 2 Tratamiento de Crudo Maya, Instituto Mexicano del Petro´leo, Me´xico, D.F., Me´xico ABSTRACT Design of regulative control laws for stabilization of regenerator temperature in adiabatic Fluid Catalytic Cracking Units is performed. This is achieved despite the fact that kinetic terms and heat generation are, commonly, unknown. This article presents a control law that makes use of on-line discrete measurements of temperature to estimate the heat of reaction, obtained from a neural- estimation algorithm. The controller design is similar to discrete PID controllers. Some new tuning rules are given in terms of closed loop and measured characteristic times. In order to obtain the simplest neural network and the minimum number of parameters to be *Correspondence: Ricardo Aguilar, Departmento de Energı´a, Universidad Auto´noma Metropolitana—Azc Apartado Postal 73-338, C.P. 07300, Me´xico, D.F., Me´xico; E-mail: raguilar@correo.azc.uam.mx. 201 DOI: 10.1081/LFT-120028533 1091-6466 (Print); 1532-2459 (Online) Copyright & 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. www.dekker.com