Averaging Level Control to Reduce Off-Spec Material in a Continuous Pharmaceutical Pilot Plant
Name
processes-01-00330.pdf
Size
2.63 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
573484259434e763f8f6507b309cf9b2
Author(s)
Lakerveld, Richard
Benyahia, Brahim
Heider, Patrick Louis
Zhang, Haitao
Braatz, Richard D
Barton, Paul I
Date Issued
November 2013
Journal
Processes
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Lakerveld, Richard et al. "Averaging Level Control to Reduce Off-Spec Material in a Continuous Pharmaceutical Pilot Plant." Processes 1, 3 (November 2013): 330-348 © 2013 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The judicious use of buffering capacity is important in the development of future continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. The potential benefits are investigated of using optimal-averaging level control for tanks that have buffering capacity for a section of a continuous pharmaceutical pilot plant involving two crystallizers, a combined filtration and washing stage and a buffer tank. A closed-loop dynamic model is utilized to represent the experimental operation, with the relevant model parameters and initial conditions estimated from experimental data that contained a significant disturbance and a change in setpoint of a concentration control loop. The performance of conventional proportional-integral (PI) level controllers is compared with optimal-averaging level controllers. The aim is to reduce the production of off-spec material in a tubular reactor by minimizing the variations in the outlet flow rate of its upstream buffer tank. The results show a distinct difference in behavior, with the optimal-averaging level controllers strongly outperforming the PI controllers. In general, the results stress the importance of dynamic process modeling for the design of future continuous pharmaceutical processes. Keywords: control; process modeling; process simulation; parameter estimation; dynamic modeling; optimization; crystallization; continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/pr1030330
