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Abstract A two‐time‐scale system involves both fast and slow dynamics. This article studies observer design for general nonlinear two‐time‐scale systems and presents two alternative nonlinear observer design approaches, one full‐order and one reduced‐order. The full‐order observer is designed by following a scheme to systematically select design parameters, so that the fast and slow observer dynamics are assigned to estimate the corresponding system modes. The reduced‐order observer is derived based on a lower dimensional model to reconstruct the slow states, along with the algebraic slow‐motion invariant manifold function to reconstruct the fast states. Through an error analysis, it is shown that the reduced‐order observer is capable of providing accurate estimation of the states for the detailed system with an exponentially decaying estimation error. In the last part of the article, the two proposed observers are designed for an anaerobic digestion process, as an illustrative example to evaluate their performance and convergence properties. 

Reversible addition–fragmentation chain–transfer (RAFT) polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) is modeled and monitored using a multi-rate multi-delay observer in this work. First, to fit the RAFT reaction rate coefficients and the initiator efficiency in the model, in situ 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experimental data from small-scale (<2 mL) NMR tube reactions is obtained and a least squares optimization is performed. 1 H NMR and size exclusion chromatography (SEC) experimental data from large-scale (>400 mL) reflux reactions is then used to validate the fitted model. The fitted model accurately predicts the polymer properties of the large-scale reactions with slight discordance at late reaction times. Based on the fitted model, a multi-rate multi-delay observer coupled with an inter-sample predictor and dead time compensator is designed, to account for the asynchronous multi-rate measurements with non-constant delays. The multi-rate multi-delay observer shows perfect convergence after a few sampling times when tested against the fitted model, and is in fair agreement with the real data at late reaction times when implemented based on the experimental measurements.