Knowledge modeling and nonlinear predictive control of evaporators in canesugar production plants

The control of the evaporating process is of the highest importance in the sugar industry, on one hand because of the influence of its behaviour on th e regularity of the sugar quality and on the other hand because of the larg e energy involvement, The highly nonlinear behaviour of the process leads i n practice to the establishment of a nonlinear structure based on a knowled ge model. This paper presents a model of the evaporators, based on balance equations and also representations of phenomena. The model is validated, us ing a study of parameter sensitivities, with data collected on the industri al plant. Finally, the validated model is included in a nonlinear predictiv e control structure, and the results are promising enough to think next abo ut the validation of this control scheme on the industrial plant. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.