Predictive functional control of temperature in a pharmaceutical hybrid nonlinear batch reactor

Abstract

These days, in times of recession, we are forced by competitiveness and the optimization of production to lower the costs of the temperature control in pharmaceutical batch reactors and increase the quantity and quality of the produced pharmaceutical product (active pharmaceutical substances). Therefore, a control algorithm is needed which provides us rapid and precise temperature control. This paper deals with the development of a control algorithm, where two predictive functional controllers are connected in a cascade for heating and cooling the content of the hybrid batch reactor. The algorithm has to be designed to cope with the constraints and the mixed discrete and continuous nature of the process of heating and cooling. The main goal of the control law is to achieve rapid and exact tracking of the reference temperature, good disturbance rejection and, in particular, a small number of heating and cooling medium switchings. The simulation results of the proposed algorithm give us much better performance compared to a conventional cascade PI algorithm.

Keywords

• batch processes
• cascade control
• predictive functional control
• temperature control