Control of Multi-Chamber Continuous Fluidized Bed Spray Granulation

Abstract

This paper is concerned with control of multi-chamber continuous fluidized bed spray granulation processes with external sieve-mill cycles. The process is described by a population balance equation for the particle size distribution in each chamber, resulting in a system of nonlinear partial integro-differential equations. Therefore, control design is challenging. In order to overcome these difficulties the control problem is formulated using a generalized distance measure, the discrepancy. It is shown that discrepancy based control allows to design a simple and effective nonlinear control law for multi-chamber continuous fluidized bed spray granulation processes with external sieve-mill cycles.