CPACT sees the first signs

Research at the Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (see PE November 1998 p27) is beginning to benefit members in areas of measurement, signal processing, process control and performance monitoring.

At a public update session at SmithKline Beecham's Harlow R&D centre, CPACT chairman Frank Cotee said that he wanted `to give enough to tantalise you without giving away confidential detail.'

As the members' session finished, the latest research results were hurriedly pulled down from the walls of the reception. The following presentation gave only a taste of the progress.

In the area of measurement techniques, progress has been made in constructing small and pilot scale reactors to test many of CPACT's other projects. Process (low field) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is being investigated to establish operating parameters for an on-line system. The project is also looking into why liquid chromatography (LC) is used so rarely on-line.

So far pilot batch and continuous flow facilities have been commissioned at Strathclyde University, and at Hull University. A model batch esterification process using MatLab and Simulink is operating there and data sets using low field NMR and on-line LC have been created.

In the signal processing project, robust calibration with small data sets for calibration during start-up and better control of batch reactions is the goal. Project leader Ian Wells of Zeneca believes these are now deliverable in the near future.

Process control research has been looking into a neural net reactor model with conventional SQP optimisation. Investigation has also begun using genetic algorithm optimisation on a conventional reactor. Finally, performance monitoring research is hoping to deliver a demonstration of the information extraction capabilities of multivariate statistical process control on data from batch and continuous processes.