A systematic approach has been attempted to design a non-linear observer to estimate the states of a non-linear system. The neural network based state filtering algorithm proposed by A.G. Parlos et al. has been used to estimate the state variables, concentration and temperature in the Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) process. (CSTR) is a typical chemical reactor system with complex nonlinear dynamics characteristics. The variables which characterize the quality of the final product in CSTR are often difficult to measure in real-time and cannot be directly measured using the feedback configuration. In this work, the comparison of the performances of an extended Kalman filter (EKF), unscented Kalman filter (UKF) and neural network (NN) based state filter for CSTR that rely solely on concentration estimation of CSTR via measured reactor temperature has been done. The performances of these three filters are analyzed in simulation with Gaussian noise source under various operating conditions and model uncertainties. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.