Conventional multivariate statistical methods for process monitoring may not be suitable for dynamic processes since they usually rely on assumptions such as time invariance or uncorrelation. We are therefore motivated to propose a new monitoring method by compensating the principal component analysis with a weight approach.The proposed monitor consists of two tiers. The first tier uses the principal component analysis method to extract cross-correlation structure among process data, expressed by independent components. The second tier estimates auto-correlation structure among the extracted components as auto-regressive models. It is therefore named a dynamic weighted principal component analysis with hybrid correlation structure. The essential of the proposed method is to incorporate a weight approach into principal component analysis to construct two new subspaces, namely the important component subspace and the residual subspace, and two new statistics are defined to monitor them respectively. Through computing the weight values upon a new observation, the proposed method increases the weights along directions of components that have large estimation errors while reduces the influences of other directions. The rationale behind comes from the observations that the fault information is associated with online estimation errors of auto-regressive models. The proposed monitoring method is exemplified by the Tennessee Eastman process. The monitoring results show that the proposed method outperforms conventional principal component analysis, dynamic principal component analysis and dynamic latent variable.
Since it is often difficult to build differential algebraic equations (DAEs) for chemical processes, a new data-based modeling approach is proposed using ARX (AutoRegressive with eXogenous inputs) combined with neural network under partial least squares framework (ARX-NNPLS), in which less specific knowledge of the process is required but the input and output data. To represent the dynamic and nonlinear behavior of the process, the ARX combined with neural network is used in the partial least squares (PLS) inner model between input and output latent variables. In the proposed dynamic optimization strategy based on the ARX-NNPLS model, neither parameterization nor iterative solving process for DAEs is needed as the ARX-NNPLS model gives a proper representation for the dynamic behavior of the process, and the computing time is greatly reduced compared to conventional control vector parameterization method. To demonstrate the ARX-NNPLS model based optimization strategy, the polyethylene grade transition in gas phase fluidized-bed reactor is taken into account. The optimization results show that the final optimal trajectory of quality index determined by the new approach moves faster to the target values and the computing time is much less.
One measurement-based dynamic optimization scheme can achieve optimality under uncertainties by tracking the necessary condition of optimality(NCO-tracking), with a basic assumption that the solution model remains invariant in the presence of all kinds of uncertainties. This assumption is not satisfied in some cases and the standard NCO-tracking scheme is infeasible. In this paper, a novel two-level NCO-tracking scheme is proposed to deal with this problem. A heuristic criterion is given for triggering outer level compensation procedure to update the solution model once any change is detected via online measurement and estimation. The standard NCO-tracking process is carried out at the inner level based on the updated solution model. The proposed approach is illustrated via a bioreactor in penicillin fermentation process.
