Cascaded two-degree-of-freedom control of seeded batch crystallisations based on explicit system inversion

Simple structures and robustness against disturbances are important attributes of chemical productions controllers. The present contribution considers these aspects for seeded batch cooling crystallisations. A new cascaded control scheme is presented. It combines consistent feedforward control with classic feedback control of the main physical process variables, which are the crystalliser temperature, the supersaturation and the crystal mean size. The calculation of the feedforward trajectories uses an explicit inversion of the crystalliser model which is based on the Methods of Moments. A state observer is used to determine online the respective moments of the crystal size distribution. An additional observer is included to estimate unmeasurable heat disturbances and to update the temperature feedforward trajectories. The present contribution summarises the model derivation, system inversion, feedforward and feedback controller design and the design of the observers. Numerical simulations and experimental results from a laboratory plant at BASF Ludwigshafen prove the applicability of the proposed control concept.