Neural modeling and control of a distillation column

Control of a nine-stage three-component distillation column is considered. The control objective is achieved using a neural estimator and a neural controller. The neural estimator is trained to represent the chemical process accurately, and the neural controller is trained to give an input to the chemical process which will yield the desired output. Training of both the neural networks is accomplished using a recursive least squares training algorithm implemented on an Intel iPSC/2 multicomputer (hypercube). Simulated results are presented for a numerical example