Averaging Level Control to Reduce Off-Spec Material in a Continuous Pharmaceutical Pilot Plant
Author(s)
Lakerveld, Richard; Benyahia, Brahim; Heider, Patrick Louis; Zhang, Haitao; Braatz, Richard D; Barton, Paul I; ... Show more Show less
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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
Date issued
2013-11Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical EngineeringJournal
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
ISSN
2227-9717