One aspect of the invention relates to controlling the
ammonia feed rate to an SCR reactor using a
NOx sensor cross-sensitive to
ammonia. The sensor, positioned downstream of the reactor, is interrogated by introducing a pulse in the
ammonia feed rate. A
positive response to a positive pulse indicates ammonia slip. A
negative response to a positive pulse indicates
NOx breakthrough. Another aspect of the invention related to a combination of feed-back and feed-forward control. Upon detecting ammonia slip, the controller enters into an ammonia slip
recovery mode in which the ammonia feed rate is reduced for a period to restore the reactor's ammonia or
NOx buffering capacity. After the
recovery period, feed-forward control is restored, optionally with an updated
control objective. A further aspect of the invention relates to a learning probabilistic model for feed-forward control trained according to the occurrence or non-occurrence of NOx breakthrough and ammonia slip.