A COMPARATIVE-STUDY ON RANDOM SEARCH ALGORITHMS FOR BIOTECHNICAL PROCESS OPTIMIZATION

A comparative study of some random search optimization schemes that ca n be used to determine sub-optimal open-loop control profiles from giv en biotechnical process models is presented and compared with the clas sical optimization approach based on Pontryagin's maximum principle th at has often been used in literature. The main objective of this study is to show that the much simpler to use random search procedures lead to essentially the same success as the classical procedure. Surprisin gly little effort is required to use these random search techniques in order to determine feed rate, feed concentration, temperature or prec ursors profiles. Hence, using these techniques, bioengineers can focus their attention much more on creating and improving the underlying pr ocess models instead of tuning complicated optimization procedures. Th ree different techniques are described in derail and their application is illustrated with standard examples from literature. (C) 1997 Elsev ier Science B.V.