Theoretical and fuzzy modelling of a pharmaceutical batch reactor

This paper deals with the development of a batch-reactor model with a theoretical and a locally affine fuzzy model. The batch reactor is used in the pharmaceutical industry for the production of drugs, where a rapid and precise temperature control is necessary. The model has to be built to include all the main features necessary for the purposes of modelling. The development of the model for the reactor is designed for further control development and simulation purposes, without doing any further experiments on the real process. In our case we use the model for simulating the reactor’s jacket temperature and the reactor’s core temperature. The theoretical model describes all the nonlinearities of the process of heating and cooling the content of the batch reactor. The main contribution of the theoretical model is in the modelling of the heat transfer between the reactor’s jacket and the reactor’s core, mainly caused by the change in the overall heat transfer, which also covers the main nonlinearity. Because of the complexity of the theoretical model a locally affine fuzzy model is also developed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.