Temperature control in a batch process by neural networks

This paper considers temperature control for a chemical plant which produces polyethylene in a batch reactor. In this plant, the reaction in a tank is complex and has many nonlinear factors. The temperature control is realized by valves manipulation. Since valve control has usually been performed by using a conventional PID controller, it generally needs much effort and time to tune the PID gains. Thus, a control system is preferable if we can tune PID gains without operator´s decision under various conditions of the plant. For that purpose, we use the self-tuning neuro-PID control method. This method has the characteristic of tuning PID gains automatically by neural networks. From the experiment results, we show the effectiveness of the proposal algorithm to improve the control performance of the temperature in the batch reactor