Pergamon Chemical Engineering Science, Vol. 52, No. 18, pp.

3067 3074, 1997

I 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
P I I : S0009-2509(97)00130-9 0009-2509/97 $17,1)0 + 0.()0

An adaptive internal model control strategy

for pH neutralization
N. R. Lakshmi Narayanan, P. R. Krishnaswamy* and G. P. Rangaiah
Department of Chemical Engineering, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, The National University of
Singapore, Singapore-119260, Singapore

(Received 2 January 1996; accepted in revised form 25 February 1997)

Abstract--An adaptive internal model control strategy that is capable of providing effective and
robust control for pH neutralization has been developed. The approach is based on combining
the concepts of non-linear internal model control, strong acid equivalent (Wright and Kravaris,
1991, Ind. Enyn9 Chem. Res. 30, 1561 1572) and a simplified adaptive mechanism (Huberman
and Lumer, 1990, I E E E Trans. Circuits Systems 37, 547-549). The resulting control system is
extensively tested via simulation for acid-base neutralization. The results show the excellent
capabilities of the proposed method for disturbance rejection, servo control and tolerance to
model uncertainty. ~ 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

Keywords: Adaptive control; internal model control; pH neutralization.

INTRODUCTION control law (RNCL), has been applied successfully to

Control of pH has been recognised as a challenging
problem because of the time-varying and non-
linear characteristics of many pH neutralization pro-
cesses. The control becomes particularly difficult
when it has to be achieved in the neutral range of pH
6-8 when only strong acids and strong bases are
present. Hence, pH control is often used as a bench
mark to test new advanced control strategies. With
the advent of fast microprocessors it has become pos-
sible to consider replacing the standard PID algo-
rithm with advanced control alternatives. Henson and
Seborg (1996) have provided a brief survey of pH
control strategies covering non-adaptive linear, adap-
tive linear, non-adaptive non-linear and adaptive
non-linear control.
One of the approaches that is of interest here is
control of pH via non-linear internal model control
(NIMC). Some authors have studied the NIMC struc-
ture for pH processes (Parrish and Brosilow, 1988;
Kulkarni et al., 1991; Nahas et al., 1992; Shukla et al.,
1993; Wong et al., 1994). Parrish and Brosilow (1988)
have modified the linear internal model control struc-
ture for non-linear systems and called it non-linear
inferential control. NIMC structure has also been
used in pH control based on neutral network (Nahas
et al., 1992). The NIMC controller for pH processes
was developed by Kulkarni et al., (1991) and was later
modified to include an adapter (Shukla et al., 1993).
The resulting control scheme, called robust non-linear
*Corresponding author.
3067
an experimental pH process (Wong et al., 1994). Avail-
able results (Shukla et al., 1993; Wong et al., 1994)
reveal that addition of an adapter renders robustness
to the NIMC. However, the results also point to the
need for further speeding up the response with a rea-
sonable sampling period in order to achieve improved
performance. It appears that if, atleast a partially
linearized process description could be obtained by
reformulating the process model, then the resulting
control system might result in faster adaptation and
control.
In a separate but related approach Wright and
Kravaris (1991) defined an equivalent pH control ob-
jective in terms of strong acid equivalent (SAE) which
is a weighted sum of ionic concentrations. The new
control objective is linear in states and is found to
yield a superior feedback control performance. How-
ever this approach is non-adpative and significant
improvement could be expected by coupling it with an
adapter mechanism.
It is thus the objective of this study to apply the
concepts of adaptation and NIMC present in RNCL
to control of pH based on SAE. The resulting control
scheme, which represents an adaptive internal model
control (AIMC) structure, is expected to have the
combined benefits of partial linearization arising from
SAE formulation and adaptation present in the
RNCL strategy. The proposed scheme is applied to
a strong acid-strong base system that is characterized
by severe nonlinearity around the neutralization
point. Simulation studies are carried out to evaluate
the effectiveness of the proposed strategy under a
variety of operating conditions.
3068 N.R. Lakshmi Narayanan et al.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONTROL STRATEGY
Consider a CSTR (Fig. l) where a strong acid is
neutralized by a strong base (e.g. HNO3-NaOH). It is
assumed that mixing is instantaneous and temper-
ature and density of the mixture are constant. Before
developing the model equations, the concept of SAE is
briefly recounted. Detailed derivation and the method
of calculating SAE on-line are available elsewhere
(Wright and Kravaris, 1991). The SAE of a mixture of
electrolytes is defined as
Y =- i ai(pHs~,)Xi
i-1
where a~(pHse,) is a function of pH~ot and is dependent
on the type of acid-base system involved. For a known
mixture of electrolytes and equilibrium constants the
value of Y can be calculated using eq. (1). However,
for an unknown mixture of electrolytes, the minimal
order realisation equation (Wright and Kravaris,
1991) along with the initial titration curve can be used
to estimate Y without on-line measurement of the
composition. For the specific case of strong acid and
strong base, the values of a~(pHs¢,) are - 1 and + 1,
respectively. Equation (1) then becomes
Y = X1 - X2.
Using the electroneutrality equation and the ioniz-
ation of water for a strong acid-strong base, given as
eqs (7) and (8) later in this section, (X~ - X2) would
become equal to (CH -- COH), where CH is related to
pH as
pH = - log CH.
From eqs (2) and (3) it can be seen that the value of
SAE for a strong acid strong base system can be
calculated if the pH value of the effluent stream is
known. In the simulation study carried out here, for
systems other than strong acid strong base, SAE of
the process output (Yp) is calculated assuming that the
composition and concentration of the effluent stream
are known.
The structure of the proposed control strategy is
given in Fig. 2(a). It has an IMC structure comprising
of process, model and controller blocks with a super-
imposed adapter block. The outputs from process and
Process Neutralising
stream {acid) stream (base)
Fi, C1 ~/ F2, C2
V
CG::> Effluent
FT, X l ,
Fig. I. A schematic of CSTR for acid base neutralization.
model blocks are in terms of SAE and the error and
the required adaptation are computed on the basis of
SAE. The adapter block, as will be seen, estimates and
introduces the required correction in the model and
controller equations. The equation for the internal
model controller present in Fig. 2(a) can now be
derived on the basis of the following steps: (i) write an
unsteady state mathematical model of the process, (ii)
solve the model equations for manipulated variable,
(iii) express the controlled variable in terms of a devi-
ation variable and (iv) replace the deviation variable
(1) by an error input E to be IMC controller to obtain the
final form of the non-linear IMC controller. Addi-
tional discussion on the derivation may be found in
the literature (Kulkarni et al., 1991).
Starting with the unsteady state total and compon-
ent balances for the CSTR, we have
F r = F1 + F2 (4)
d X ~ / d t = (l/V) (F1CI - F T X t ) (5)
d X d d t = (l/V) (F2C 2 - - FrX2) (6)
The equilibrium constant for the ionisation of water
(Kw) is
(2) CHCoH = Kw (7)
and at 2Y'C the value of K w is 10 ~4. The electro-
neutrality equation is
C H - - C O H = X 1 - - X 2. (8)
Combining eqs (2) to (8) we get an expression for the
process model in terms of Y as
(3)
d Y / d t = (l/V) (FiG 1 - - F2Cz - F R Y ) . (9)
The base flow rate (F2) is considered as the manipu-
lated variable. The process model [eq. (9)], upon re-
arranging, gives
F2 = [1/(C2 + Y)] [ F , ( C , - Y ) - V (dY/dt)].
(10)
A deviation variable Yd may now be defined as
Yd = Y - Y~where Ys is the initial steady state value
of Y. Introducing this in eq. (10), we get
F2 = [1/(Cz + (Yd + Y~))][Fl(C1 - - (lid + Y~)
-- V (d Y/dO]. (11)
An error term E may now be defined as
E = Yset- ( Y p - Ym) where Yset is the set point for
pH in terms of Y, and Yp and Ym are the outputs (in
the form of SAE) from the process and model respec-
tively. Yd is replaced by E in eq. (ll) and the final
controller expression reduces to
F2 = [1/(C2 + Y~ + E ) ] [ F I ( C , - Y~ - E)
- V (dE~dO]. (12)
In solving the controller eq. (12) d E / d t may be cal-
culated using first-order finite difference approxima-
X2 tion,
d E / d t = (E~ - E , _ ~ ) / T (13)
 An adaptive internal model control strategy 3069

Clm
~Yset
[Adapter Y~P
Yset + J Yp
/--'1 C°n'r°"er! Fi Process

1
(a)
Yset Yp
• ©---.ico°,,o..e, i L~ Process]
i

Model ] Ym_~;

(b)
I pHset
Clm I Adapter~
CHset+< F2° " I Process Clip
1.--.I ]
I Model OHm

(c)
Fig. 2. Block diagrams for (a) adaptive internal model control, (b) strong acid equivalent based internal
model control, and (c) robust non-linear control law.

where E, and E,_ 1 are the current and the previous
values of the error and T is the sampling period. As
the output values from the process and the model are
in terms of Y, for strong acid-strong base, the corres-
ponding pH is calculated from
pH = - log,o{EY + x / ( Y z + (4Kw))]/2}. (14)
The above derivations of process, model and con-
troller equations are valid for strong acid and strong
base systems only. In case of other unknown chemical
species, say a weak acid, entering the system the
dynamics governing the process would change. Deri-
vation of dynamic equations for weak acid and strong
base (acetic acid - sodium hydroxide system) is avail-
able in the literature (McAvoy et al., 1972) and it may
be extended for mixture of acids. In general this might
call for a change in the model and the corresponding
controller equations. However, as will be seen, the
proposed strategy is robust enough to allow the equa-
tions derived for a strong acid strong base system to
be used for weak or unknown mixture of acids enter-
ing the CSTR. This is because the adaptation loop
introduced in the system modifies the inputs to and
consequently the outputs from the model and control-
ler equations on-line accordingly. This is one of the
major advantages of the present strategy as its ap-
plication does not require solving various specific
model equations.
As strong acid-strong base systems are sensitive to
minor variation in the operating parameters in the pH
region of 6-8, to achieve better performance, the con-
troller and model equations may have to be altered
suitably to compensate for disturbances affecting the
process. This is achieved by adapting that parameter
in the process dynamics which well represents the
3070 N.R. Lakshmi Narayanan et al.
disturbances that occur in the system. In the dynamic where e is the difference between the desired set point
model of the process [eq. (9)] there are seven para- and the current process output and e, is the tuning
meters F~, F2, C1, C2, V, X] and X2, The flows F~ and parameter. This differential equation is approximated
F2 are measurable, base concentration C2 and reactor by Euler's method with step size equal to sampling
volume V are known and the total anion and cation period as
concentrations Xt and X2 are dependant variables. fire,n+ 1 -- Clm, n
- ~e (16)
The feed concentration C1 is the only parameter that T
is generally unknown and can be used as an adapta-
tion parameter. Shukla et al. (1993) and Wong et al. where T is the sampling period. As e in the case of
(1994) have used adaptation based on acid concentra- AIMC strategy [Fig. 2(a)] is (Yse,- Y), eq. (16) be-
tion in their pH control study. The adapted feed comes

concentration, denoted by C]~, is a hypothetical value

used in the model and the controller output calcu-
lations. C~,,, as will be seen below, can be calculated
using the adapter equation [eq. (17)]. For non-linear
systems, a simple adaptive control mechanism that is
similar to least mean square algorithms of linear sys-
tems under certain conditions, has been reported in
the literature (Huberman and Lumer, 1990). Accord-
ing to these authors, process can be represented by
first- or higher-order differential equations(s) and the
adaptation dynamics in the form of first-order differ-
ential equation,
dClm
- ee
dt
Clm,,+l = C]m,. + e(Yset - Y ) T . (17)
For comparison purposes the block diagrams for
NIMC and RNCL are provided in Figs 2(b) and (c),
respectively. The NIMC structure makes use of the
SAE concept and contains only three blocks (process,
model and controller blocks). These blocks are identi-
cal to the corresponding blocks in Fig. 2(a). The
RNCL strategy, like the proposed strategy, has an
adapter block. However RNCL is based on hydrogen
ions and adaptation is carried out on the basis of pH.
A detailed simulation study of RNCL has been car-
ried out by Shukla et al. (1993).
(15)

11
14

AIMC lO
12 m--RNCL
9

/"\

?
10 8
Z
Q.
-I-
Q.
7
II o
o
a.
II O.
6
III I
II/ / 5
i ~ /
4
4

3
2 o 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000

100 200 300 400 500 600

lOO.
90,
lOO | A
.E so
_ , E
" 80 -- 70
E , ,
~ 70.~ k 6o
~ 60. r~ 50-
50
o 40
o 40 \1 14.
30
30 (/)
I~ 20 '
| 2o
lO 10-
o 0 I ( i

lOO 200 3oo 400 500 600 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000

Time (s) Time (s)

Fig. 3. AIMC and RNCL performance for 50% disturbance Fig. 4. NIMC performance for 50% disturbance in inlet
in inlet acid concentration. acid concentration.
 An adaptive internal model control strategy 3071
SIMULATION acid to a weak acid, and (iii) switching the feed from
To simulate the proposed A I M C strategy strong acid to a mixture of acids and
[Fig. 2(a)], initially a strong acid - strong base system (b) a set point change from 7 to 8 accompanied by
( H N O 3 - N a O H ) was assumed. In addition, to begin a 10% modelling error in acid flow rate. In all cases
with, an error-free model was also assumed. Thus, in step disturbances in both forward and reverse direc-
preliminary simulation studies, eq. (9) represented tions were considered. The results obtained are dis-
both the process and the model and the IMC control- cussed below.
ler itself was represented by eq. (12). Equation (17) was
used for adaptation. For the adaptation module in the 0.020-
present strategy, the tuning parameter (e) employed
was - 75. It was found that higher values of e made O.Ola.
the system oscillatory and lower values made it slug- A
gish. Satisfactory response was obtained for all distur- j 0.010• I ~,
bances with ~: = - 75. In subsequent simulation work, I
the strong acid was replaced by a weak acid or a mix-
ture of acids and this involved attendant changes to
~ o.014.
•1
I / . . . . .
RNCL

the process equation. However, the model and the ~-,. o.012.
I
controller equations derived for strong acid-strong K
/ AIMC
base system were retained without any modification ~ o.olo.
<
even where weak and mixture of acids were employed.
In simulating the basic N I M C strategy [Fig. 2(b)], 0.00e
the equations used for the controller, process and
model were the same as those used above. However, 0.006
100 200 300 400 SO0 600
adaptation was not involved. The RNCL [Fig. 2(c)] o
Time (s)
was implemented using the equations and tuning
parameter proposed by Shukla et al. (1993). The tu- Fig. 5. Comparison ofadapterparameter ~ r AIMC and
ning parameter value of ~: = 500 used by Shukla et al. RNCL.
(1993) was employed here also. All the simulations
were carried out on a DEC 7000 UNIX computer tl
using F O R T R A N language and IMSL subroutine for
stiffdifferential equation in accordance with the block 10
diagrams in Figs. 2(a) (c). The following nominal pro-
cess operating conditions were employed (Shukla 9
et al., 1993): Acid flow, F~ = 5001/min; Base flow,
t;2 = 50 l/rain: Acid concentration, CI = 0.01 N; Base a:
8
c o n c e n t r a t i o n , C 2 =0.1 N; Volume of the tank, "
V = 2000 1. As a precaution, to avoid any unrealistic ~ 7 ,- k
value for the manipulated variable (base flow rate),
minimum and maximum limit were introduced in the o. n
simulation as 10 and 2501/min, respectively. The
sampling period chosen for simulation was 1 s in all
cases.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3
Simulation of the acid-base neutralization as de- 50 100 150 200
scribed above aided in testing the performance and
robustness of the proposed control strategy. The con- 100 /
trol objective was to maintain the effluent pH at 7 by ~ a0
manipulating the flow of N a O H in the presence of "~ 80
load disturbances. Servo capabilities of the control ~ 70
scheme and modelling errors were also considered. ~, 60
50
For comparison purposes, characteristics of the
O 40
N I M C and RNCL systems were also included. The ,7 30
proposed strategy was thoroughly tested for perfor- ~ 20
mance and robustness through a wide range ofdistur- "~ 10
bances as indicated below: o
0 50 100 150 200
Time (sec)
(a) disturbances in feed concentration or composi-
tion involving (i) a 50% change in strong acid concen- Fig. 6. Performance of AIMC for a change from strong to
tration at the inlet, (ii) switching the feed from strong weak acid.
3072 N.R. Lakshmi Narayanan eta/.
Regulatory performance of the proposed A1MC
was first analysed by introducing a 50% step change
in feed concentration (change in C1 from 0.01 to
0.015 N). The resulting process recovery curve for pH
is shown in Fig. 3 (solid line) along with correspond-
ing movement of the manipulated variable, Fz.
Clearly excellent disturbance rejection is evident. The
step change in C~ was removed at 300 s (i.e. C1 was
changed back to 0.01 N) and the transients obtained
(included in Fig. 3) also reveal excellent regulatory
performance. For comparison purposes, correspond-
ing simulation results for RNCL and NIMC are also
shown. The RNCL performance (also plotted in
Fig. 3) shows that, although corrective action is
achieved, relative to AIMC the transients in pH and
control valve movements fluctuate significantly. It
may be recalled that the NIMC strategy here (Fig. 4)
is based on SAE. In this case a sampling period of 1 s
was found to be acceptable albeit at the expense of
settling time. This contrasts with a sampling period of
0.000025 s specified by Kulkarni et al. (1991) for a sim-
ilar study involving hydrogen ions-based NIMC con-
troller. In terms of settling time, AIMC (with a settling
time of 20s), is about 9 times better than RNCL
(settling time 180 s) and 90 times better than NIMC
(settling time 1800 s). This reflects the superiority
of the proposed strategy even under a fairly large
sampling period. This is due to the adaptation
achieved on the basis of SAE. The other alternative
strategies under consideration either have less effec-
tive adaptation (as in RNCL which has a pH-based
adaptive controller) or no adaptation at all (as in
N1MC). This can be seen in Fig. 5 where the outputs
of the dynamic adaptive mechanisms used in RNCL
14
12
10
"I- 8
Q.
6
4
2 -0.010
0 i i i
0 0.05 0.1
14
12
..
10
8
6
4 I
2 -0.010
0 i
0.05 0.1
Ratio ( B a s e / A c i d F l o w Rate)
Fig. 7. Titration curve based on pH and SAE for (a) strong acid and (b) weak acid.
and AIMC are compared. In the case of AIMC the
adaptation is completed in 20 s whereas C1,, in RNCL
shows some oscillations and takes a much longer time
to reach its final value.
To further confirm robustness of the proposed con-
trol system, the influent acid was switched from strong
(nitric) to weak (acetic) at a given instant (i.e., 0.01 N
HNO3 at 5001/min was replaced by 0.015N
CH3COOH at 5001/min that is characterized by
a different titration curve). At the same time the orig-
inal controller and model equations developed for
strong acid were retained in the simulation without
any modification. The purpose was to test whether
significant changes in the actual process behaviour
would be tolerated by the AIMC strategy designed for
strong acid. It can be seen from the results (Fig. 6) that
the adaptive mechanism employed is so effective that
the controller brought the pH to its set point within
a short period. At 100 s, the influent acid was switched
back to strong acid and once again excellent control
was achieved. The base flow rate variation is also
illustrated in Fig. 6. The strong and weak acid re-
sponses (Figs 3 and 6) are somewhat similar in nature.
The reason for this may be found in the titration
curves based on pH and SAE (Fig. 7). The process
gains based on pH for strong acid (0.01 N) and weak
acid (0.015 N) at pH = 7.0 are about 360 and 1, re-
spectively, and they vary significantly for the whole
range of pH. But the process gain based on SAE for
strong acid (0.01 N) and weak acid (0.015N) are
about the same ( - 0.00018) and are almost constant
for any value ofpH. The main difficulty in pH control
is considered to be the varying steady state gain (Lin
and Yu, 1993). By using SAE instead ofpH the steady-
0.015
pH 0.010
[a]
0.005
0.000
-0.005
i -0.0t5
0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
0.015
pH
'" 0.010
[b] 0.005
Y 0.000 >-
-0.005
i i i -0.015
0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
 An adaptive internal model control strategy 3073
state gain is made practically constant, thus achieving 9.0
better control. The performances of both NIMC and
RNCL for weak acid disturbance were significantly
inferior. As AIMC consistently outperformed both 5.s
NIMC and RNCL in this as well as in subsequent
tests, only the performance results due to AIMC will
henceforth be discussed. 8.0
Figure 8 illustrates additional control results for
AIMC when the influent acid was switched from ~ 7.5
strong (0.01 N HNO3 at 500 l/min) to a mixture of
acids consisting of 0.01 N HNO3 at 400 l/min and a.
0.1 N CH3COOH at 100 l/min. As before the influent 7.0.
was switched back to strong acid at 100 s. The results
in this and in the previous plot clearly demonstrate
that changes in process characteristics, though not 0.5
tracked directly by the model and the controller, were
well compensated by the proposed adaptive mecha-
nism. 5.o
50 100 150 200
Finally, to study the servo control problem,
a change in set point was introduced. In addition,
52.0
a 10% mismatch in flow (F1) was also introduced in
~" 51.5
the model and controller equations. This represents
'F: 5 1 . 0
a measurement error in flow and consequent incorrect
identification of the flow parameter in the model and so.5

controller expressions. Simulations were carried out n~ 50.0

11
o 49.5
u.
49.0
m 48.5

48.0
50
I
100 150 200
10
Time (s)

l
9
Fig. 9. Performance of AIMC for set point change from 7 to
8 accompanied by 10% modelling error in acid flow.
8
'1-
for the case where (i) pH set point was changed from
7 the initial operating value of 7 to 8 and (ii) the acid
a.
flow rate in both the model and controller equations
was simultaneously taken as 4501/min against the
true operating flow rate of 500 l/rain. As in all pre-
vious cases, after an elapse of 100 s, the disturbances
(i.e., set point change and model error) were removed.
The control trajectory, plotted in Fig. 9, reveals that
AIMC has excellent servo capabilities even in the
presence of measurement errors.
50 100 150 200
CONCLUSIONS
180 The adaptive internal model control (AIMC) strat-
~" 160
egy is formulated by combining the concepts of ad-
"E 140
v aptation as in RNCL, strong acid equivalent (SAE)
= 12o

l
and non-linear internal model control (NIMC) struc-
loo
ture. The combination is such that the resulting
3 80
o control system provides dramatic improvement in
u. 6O
40
disturbance rejection compared to the performances
20
of RNCL and SAE-based NIMC when used alone.
The present method shows a significant advantage in
50 100 150 200 terms of response time and sampling period. Servo
Time (s)
control and model uncertainty are also well-ac-
counted. Overall, the on-line adaptation of the model
Fig. 8. Performance of AIMC for a change from strong to and the controller as proposed here makes the control
mixture of acids. system robust and effective.
3074 N. R. Lakshmi Narayanan et al.
NOTATION REFERENCES

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Cn hydrogen ion concentration, N
adaptive system. IEEE Trans. Circuits Systems 37,
Con hydroxyl ion concentration, N
547 549.
e difference between the set point and the pro- Lin, J. Y. and Yu, C. C. (1993) Automatic tuning and
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T
Nahas, E. P., Henson, M. A. and Seborg, D. E. (1992)
t time, s
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karni, B. D. and Deshapande, P. B. (1994) Experi-
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n- 1 previous value
p process
s steady state
set set point