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CONTROL OF BATCH PROCESSES

D. W. T. Rippin
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Abstract. Measures taken to control batch operations are reviewed and classified
according to the amount of information available and the manner in which additional
information is acquired and utilized.

The appropriateness of particular control strateaies for a batch operation will depend
upon the wider system within which that operation ha s to be integrated. This system
will generally include other batch operations which must be coordinated to produce the
same product and may also encompass the production of other products. The role of these
wider considerations in setting the agenda for the control objectives of individual
batch operations is di scuss ed.
Keywords. Batch process operation, batch process co ntrol, estimation, fi .lterin g,
optlmal control, sensitivity anal ys is, un certainty .

I NTRODUCTI ON CHARACTERISTICS OF BATCH PROCESSES

In the title of the earlier DYCORD meeting
batch processes were not mentioned explicitly.
However, of the 21 papers on reactors at that
meeting, about one third concerned themselves
with batch reactors.
I shall assume that the "+" in the title of the
present meeting refers to the official incor-
poration of batch processes in general as
indicated in the full title. About one third of
the total number of papers is concerned with
batch operations of various kinds, not confined
to conventional batch reactors.
In a meeting on dynamics and control it is
natural to include batch processes since they
are of necessity dynamic and in each batch they
have at least a minimum requirement for control
- to start and to stop. However, for decades
control engineers did not concern themselves
with batch processes, they had enough to do in
control schemes for large continuous processes.
Furthermore, ample profits could be made on
batch processes without bothering about sophis-
ticated control, and in any case the available
control methods were not suited to highly non-
linear systems operating over a wide range of
conditions and whose detailed behaviour was
often quite poorly understood.
However, batch processes have now come to the
fore ~conomically which has, of course, stimu-
lated competition and implied pressure for
better performance and hence for better con-
trol. At the same time the control community is
concerning itself with more general problems
than those of simple regulation, with more
complex, non-linear systems and with explicit
recognition of modelling inadequacies. Thus
batch processes may now offer attractive and
challenging problems for the control community.
1. Di vers ity
Batch processing environments are characterized
by enormous diversity. Production scale may
range from thousands of tons to a few kilograms
per year. The number of products produced
annually in a production facility may be be-
tween one and several hundred or more. Products
and raw materials may be extremely valuable or
very cheap. Certain special equipment items may
be enormously expensive. Some of the equipment
and processes carried out in them may be very
reliable and reproducible or the reverse.
Limited availability and costs of energy or
other resources such as manpower may be
dominating or negligible. Promptness in servic-
ing individual customer orders direct from
production may be crucial, or all manufacturing
may be to medium-term stock. Someone who has
grown familiar with a particular batch environ-
ment and operates effectively there may fail to
appreciate that in another environment quite
different factors may dominate.
Something of the diversity of applications and
individual operations may be seen in contribu-
tions to the present conference. A variety of
batch chemical reactors, including polymerisa-
tion and fermentation reactors are treated. In
addition there are applications in canned food,
crystallization, a batch furnace and
photographic coating. Any number of other
examples of batch operations could be quoted.
However, the challenge and fascination of batch
processes derives not only from the variety of
batch operations, but even more from the multi-
plicity of ways in which these diverse
operations are coordinated, managed and con-
trolled as constituent elements of a much
larger batch processing system.
 D. W. T. Rippin
2. Ill-definedness
This deliberately awkward term includes ele-
ments of change. variabi 1i ty. uncerta i nty and
lack of knowledge. each of which might or might
not be more precisely definable. but which
taken together reflect the situation very
commonly found in batch plants.
The ill-definedness may encompass the system
itself. the environment and the demands. The
system comprises processes for one or more
products which have to be realised in available
equipment. The process may be only incompletely
understood in that the processi ng time for a
given operation may be stochastically dis-
tributed between rather wide limits. the
dynamics of response to perturbation may change
over the operating region. the performance of
an equipment item may deteriorate with time.
Chanoes in the envirnnment may result in
variability in resources or raw materials. New
demands may call for the production of products
that were unknown or at least unanticipated.
when the plant was built.
3. Demands on plant - versatility and
flexibil ity
In batch situations processing facilities
commonly have to cope with many different
products. The choice of equipment and th~
planning. operating and control arrangements
have to allow for this versatility. Any in-
dividual operation almost always takes place
over a wide range of conditions. Operating and
control facilities and any supporting models
and software must be sufficiently flexible to
accommodate this.
MANAGING A BATCH ENVIRONMENT
The recent surge of interest in quality control
has reminded us that this is a discipline which
should be exercised over the whole manufactur-
ing operation including its design and
management. What can be said about total
quality control can also be said about total
control of a batch situation. Delivering the
rlght products at the right time with the right
quality and the right price requires attention
to every part of the system.
This necessitates appropriate integration of
the sequence of tasks to be carried out for
each process. the set of equipment items and
the product demands.
Batch problems may typically include:
design: choice of the number and size of
equipment items to meet the manufacturi ng
requirements of one or more products
capacity planning: determine how the batch
operations required for a set of products
should be distributed over a set of avail-
able equipment items to manufacture the
products most effectively
scheduling: determine the time sequence in
which batches of different products are to
be produced to meet a detailed pattern of
customer requirements in time.
control: ensure the performance of in-
dividual batch operations in terms of. for
example. quality. capacity and timing
implementation: hardware and software
realisation of control. Possibly in-
tegrated with higher level requirements.
These different problems require different
types of information about individual batch
operations which may be provided by a hierar-
chical model structure such as that shown in
Table 2 (Rippin 1983b).
Realistic batch problems at any level are
solved by picking out the dominating effects in
a situation and concentrating on these. Where
products are very valuable attention may be
paid to yield on raw materials and inventory
costs. Very expensive equipment may call for
high utilization. It will not usually be pos-
sible to find an optimal. or perhaps even a
feasible. solution to a batch problem taking
into account all possible relevant factors.
Ideally. a screening procedure should identify
the dOminating factors and direct the user to
appropriate problem formulations and solution
methods. In a familiar situation appropriate
procedures have probably been developed over
time. However. in a new situation these proce-
dures may be by no means obvious. Work has
begun on a batch tool kit which. it is planned.
will eventually assist users in identification
of appropriate problem formulations and solu-
tion methods in a general batch environment
(Hofmeister. Halasz and Rippin. 1988. 1989).
CONTROL OF A BATCH OPERATION
Plant design and the planning and scheduling of
production. possibly of many products. set the
scene for work of the type described by Juba
and Hamer (1986) in their practical and il-
luminating review of the control of individual
batch operations. Their discussion of how
effectively the use of model based controllers
can improve the operation of batch reactors is
illustrated by examples of the safe conduct of
exothermic reactions and the generation of
optimum profiles of control variables.
Time did not and does not permit a comprehen-
sive treatment of publications on batch process
control. even since 1986. and even if attention
is restricted to the control of individual
batch operations. However. since the latter
topic is the main theme of batch papers ac-
cepted for this conference. the opportunity is
taken to place these papers within a suggested
classification of what might be done in the
control of individual batch operations. This
will help to highlight some main directions of
current activities. Control of batch operations
is exercised within a wider context. This
determines the incentives for and the ap-
propriateness of possible alternative control
strategies.
Major challenges for the control of batch
operations are posed by the intrinsic charac-
teristics of batch processes. namely their
diversity and ill-definedness and the resulting
demands on the plant for versatility and
flexibility. Thus the requirements at the level
of operational control may be very diverse and
subject to change.
Modest changes and variations in the system can
be accommodated by control action. The manner
in which variability and lack of information
are treated form the basis of the subsequent
classification of methods for the control of
 Control of Batch Processes
batch operations. Sufficiently substantial
changes call for management intervention. One
view of the challenge to modern control and
computational capabilities from ill-defined
systems, such as those for batch operations is
how much variability can be accommodated before
management intervention becomes unavoidable,
that is, how much robustness can be provided or
"How far can the bounds of modesty be extended?"
OBJECTIVES OF BATCH
CONTROL
Control of batch operations can have widely
differing immediate objectives. These range
from simply damping out the effects of small
perturbations from known standard conditions,
as in conventional control of continuous
processes, to developing a complete operating
strategy on line in response to observed system
behaviour. Objectives and control strategy
should be chosen to correspond to the prior
knowledge of the system and how well defined
and stable this knowledge is. The variety of
the immediate objectives assumed for batch
control can be illustrated from papers in the
conference where some of the objectives are:
robustness against disturbances (Chen Quin, Nan
Li and others, 1989), tracking a profile for
some variable of the system as closely as
possible (Bordeneuve, Najim and Babary, 1989;
Rafalimanana, Najim and Casamatta, 1989; Zhou
Hengjie and others, 1989), improvement in
product quality expressed either as reaching
better levels of desirable qualities, for
example in canned food (Gui-Qiao Li, Peng-Cheng
Zaho and Ji-Cheng Wang, 1989) and polymer
properties (Kozub and MacGregor, 1989) or
reduction in variability about a specified
quality level as in the production of
photographic material (Swanson 1989), end point
recognition and control in fermentation (Chen
Qi, Fu Chunseng and others, 1989) and in
speCiality chemical production (Raw1ings, Hamer
and Bruemmer, 1989), improvement of production
rate by reduction of batch time (Ko, Kirby and
Tong, 1989) while at the same time maintaining
desirable product quality characteristics as in
sugar crystallization (de Azevedo and others,
1989), early identification of potentially
hazardous situations (Range 1989).
The relation of the performance of one batch
operation to that of the batch process, made up
of several constituent operations, within its
wider environment will be considered later.
MEANS OF BATCH CONTROL
Methods used for the control of batch opera-
tions will be discussed in relation to the
amount of knowledge available about the system
and what is done to cope with lack of defini-
tion. Some different ways of treating the
problems are listed in Table 1. Methods listed
alternate between specification of operations
and the generation of further information until
the information generation and operational
activities are combined in stage 5.
1. Operate a known system OPERATION
Many batch operations are carried out to a
defined recipe which may have been arrived
at during chemical development and is never
changed. The recipe may involve maintaining
levels or following trajectories of manipu-
lated variables, measured variables or
variables inferred directly from other
I : I:~
measurements. For example in some cir -
cumstances a concentration may be inferred
from measurement of one or more physical
properties of a fluid. Of course, if the
system is sufficiently well known and under-
stood, optimal levels and trajectories can
be calculated for relevant variables and
implemented as required. Representative
results on optimal trajectories for a range
of batch processes were summarized in an
earlier review (Rippin 1983a). Some conclu-
sions which should be noted are:
there are common batch operations for
which the optimal trajectories are to
maintain constant levels of the cor-
responding variables
even for operations for which optimal
trajectories can be determined, the
advantage obtained by following the
trajectory rather than using the best
constant levels of the variables and the
sensitivity of optimal performance to the
detailed shape of the trajectories may
both be rather small.
it is important to determine first the
best average levels of operating vari-
ables. Most systems are likely to be much
more sensitive to this than to details of
trajectory shape.
This is a warning that before significant
effort is invested in optimization of
profile shape a preliminary evaluation
should be made of u1timace potencial
benefits. However, there are certainly
significant benefits to be had, for example
from the temperature profile for a single
reversible exothermic reaction, or even
spectacular ones (Denbigh, 1958). Perhaps
large advantages are more likely to be found
when the objective function has a special
structure (Raw1ings, Hamer and Bruemmer,
1989) or when the product quality exhibits a
detailed dependence on the history of the
operation as in crystal size distribution
(de Azevado and others, 1989) or in polymer
constitution (Kozub and MacGregor 1989). It
would be of considerable interest to have
available a catalogue of the possible
benefits of the use of optimal trajectories
for a range of common operations and reac-
tion kinetic schemes. Such results could be
interpreted for a variety of objective
functions by using Horn's concept of the
attainable region (Horn, 1964) recently
revisited by Glasser, Hildebrandt and Crowe
(1987). Some preliminary contributions to
such a catalogue were made by Hatipoglu
(1985). For the computation of optimal
trajectories Cuthrell and 8iegler (1989)
have demonstrated the effectiveness of
discretizing the trajectory by orthogonal
collocation on finite elements and solving
the trajectory optimization problem in this
form by non-linear programming. An example
of the application of the method is
presented in this conference (Rawlings,
Hamer and Bruemmer, 1989).
When the system is completely known, its
optimal operation for any objective function
can be realised by implementing appropriate
time profiles for the manipulated variables.
However, ri g id observance of these time
profiles will not make any allowance for
possible ill effects of small disturbances.
Of course, if the disturbances were com-
pletely known, appropriate adjustments to
 D. W. T. Rippill
the optimal time profiles of the manipulated
variables could be made and implemented.
However. in practice. the effects of distur-
bances only become evident through their
effect on the measured variables of the
system. A system which is more robust to
disturbances may be obtained if the desired
operating conditions are expressed as time
profiles of one or more state variables.
These state variables may be measured
directly or inferred directly from other
current measurements. When the users have
sufficient confidence in prescribed levels
or trajectories of measured or inferred
variables. however these are derived. the
control task may be seen as simply correct-
ing any deviations from these prescriptions.
This may be done by conventional feedback
controllers with the set points constrained
to follow desired trajectories. However.
since the dynamic characteristics of the
unit often change substantially over the
operating region. there may be advantages in
enhancing the capabilities of the tracking
controller with adaptive or non-linear
features. Procedures for tracking specified
trajectories form part of several presenta-
tions at this conference as already
mentioned.
Of course. if through the optimality condi-
tions. the manipulated variables can be
determined directly as a function of the
current measured vari ab 1es. th is is 1i ke 1y
to be more effective than attempting to
track a time profile of a measured variable.
The operating characteristics of a system
may change with time or circumstances as may
the objectives or the inputs or other inter-
actions with the environment. If the system
is sufficiently well known the optimum
operating choices can be determined for any
of these conditions. It is a matter of
convenience whether such information is pre-
determined and stored in advance or whether
it is re-computed from time to time using
appropriate models as required.
2. Evaluate sensitivity INFORMATION
In practice no system is completely known.
However for many batch systems the uncer-
tainties may be sufficiently small or the
consequences of the uncertainties may be
sufficiently small that the system can be
treated as if it were completely known.
This is common practice for many batch
operations which work on a fixed recipe.
Relevant composition measurements may be
difficult or impossible to obtain or even if
obtainable may be subject to such delay that
they cannot be used for feed back purposes
on the same batch of product.
The importance of such constraints can be
quantitatively assessed by sensitivity
analysis if appropriate models are available
for the system. The sensitivity of system
performance to disturbances when control
variables are held at nominal levels and to
changes in the levels of variables that are
held constant through the batch is easily
determined. Methods are also available for
determining the sensitivity of systems in
which an optimal profile is followed. Some
examples of the application of sensitivity
analysis to batch reactors with optimal
profiles in temperature or feed rate were
recently given by Nikolaou and
Manousiouthakis (1988). Determination of the
sensitivity jointly with a piecewise ap-
proximation to the optimal profile is
described by Eaton. Rawl ings and Edgar
(1988) •
As already discussed. some control
strategies regard the optimal profile as
given and seek to correct any deviations
from it as rapidly as possible or alterna-
tively to minimize some average measure of
this deviation over the batch. However. this
strategy implies that the derived profile
remains optimal independently of any distur-
bances to the operation. As pointed out by
t~acGregor (1986): "Even the objective of
bringing the reactor back to a trajectory
that is based on a purely deterministic
model. or even based on past experience is
questionable. because in the presence of
stochastic variations that have caused the
reactor states to deviate from this trajec-
tory. the precomputed trajectory wi 11 no
longer be optimal." A measure of the loss
attributable to such variations or alterna-
tively to the failure to respond to the
variations by continually re-evaluating and
re-adjusting the optimal profile could be
the subject of further sensitivity studies.
The conclusion of a sensitivity study may be
that the effects of incomplete knowledge of
the system are negligible compared with the
cost of attempting to compensate for this
lack of knowledge or to acquire more
knowledge. The system should be operated at
nominal values based on current knowledge.
Otherwise measures should be taken to com-
pensate for the lack of knowledge or to
acquire more knowledge.
3. Control of the partially known OPERATION
For systems that are incompletely understood
one of two general strategies for control
and optimisation may be followed. One type
of strategy does not seek directly to obtain
more knowledge about the system but rather
to develop procedures which produce accept-
able or even optimal performance despite
this lack of knowledge. The other type of
strategy seeks to acquire more knowledge and
then adapt its procedures accordingly.
The commonest measure to compensate for lack
of knowledge about the system is feedback
control. Adjustments of manipulated vari-
ables to compensate for deviations of
measured or inferred state variables from
desired conditions is inherently more robust
than simply following a time profile for the
manipulated variables. Sequence controllers
which switch conditional on system state
have similar advantages over simple timers.
Simple feedback procedures assume that the
desired state of the system is known and has
only to be re-established. In fact. it may
not be known or may not be stable when lack
of knowledge or variability is substantial.
One response to lack of precise information
about the system. particularly when this is
qualitatively expressed. is the use of fuzzy
methods. which may be combined with or
complemented by expert systems or other
knowledge based procedures. A current ex-
amp 1e of thi s approach is found in Chen Qi.
Fu Chunseng and others (1989).
 Control of Batch Processes
When knowledge of system uncertainties is
quantitative, at least to the extent of
i dent ifyi ng thei r nature and range, then
more precise choice can be made of the
optimal operating procedure in the face of
these uncertainties.
If the system and its environment can be
characterized by parameters with upper and
lower bounds on their values, then for any
defined control strategy, interval mathe-
matics can be used to determine the upper
and lower bounds of performance to be ex-
pected. If some measure of the desirability
of a given range of performance is available
then alternative control strategies can be
compared with one another and the best
selected. Reports are available of the
application of such methods to a range of
equipment design problems (Gruhn, Fichtner
and Filipow, 1987) and to the design of a
multiproduct batch plant under uncertainty
(Fichtner, Reinhart and Rippin, 1989).
If, in addition, information is available or
may be assumed about the statistical dis-
tributions of the uncertainties, then by
integrating over the joint distribution of
the uncertainties for a given control
strategy a probability distribution of
performance can be derived. With some
measure of the desirability of the perfor-
mance distribution, as before, alternative
control strategies can be compared or op-
timised. Integration over the joint
distribution of uncertainties can be carried
out by Monte Carlo simulation, by numerical
integration, amounting to structured sam-
pling procedures, or by other methods (e.g.
Reinhart and Rippin, 1986, 1987).
A very active field of research in control
theory is the development of robust control
strategies for linear systems of which the
parameters are unknown but bounded. These
strategies give guaranteed levels of perfor-
mance, even in worst case situations.
However, neither this nor the other methods
which take quantitative account of the
1 imits of knowledge, whether by distribu-
tions or bounds seem to have yet been
applied directly to the control of batch
operations.
4. Reconstruct the unknown INFORMATION
Knowledge may be added to information
directly available from the process to
provide more useful information. Knowledge
contained in the very general observation
that system behaviour changes regularly and
smoothly over the operating region,
encourages the use of empirical models to
predict and interpolate the effects of
change and variation over a restricted
region of validity.
The much more powerful knowledge of the
general scientific principles governing the
behaviour of the system allows more powerful
models to be built. These may contain ele-
ments that are mandatory, resulting, for
example, from conservation or thermodynamic
principles and elements that have to be
matched to observation, such as rate expres-
sions for reactions. More distinctive
information can be generated such as ex-
trapolations of system performance or
reconstruction of internal variables of the
system that are not susceptible to measure-
ment.
135
For systems which are too complex to model
comprehensively, benefits can be derived
from the use of tendency models which retain
the physical understanding of the system but
expressed in simplified form which is fitted
to local behav i our. There are some accounts
of the use of such models, but no rigorous
evaluation of their merits (Cawthon and
Knaebel, 1989; Fil ippi-Bossy and others,
1989).
If the models are matched to system perfor-
mance in some way then, within their range
of validity, any of them can be used to
predict the consequences of control action
on performance.
However if, as is often the case, it is
desirable to exercise control over some
performance indicator that is not directly
accessible to measurement, a model that is
at least partly mechanistic will usually be
required to generate this information.
Heusinkve1d (1989) provides an example of
offline model fitting.
For systems with changing characteristics or
where the model has only local validity the
knowledge of the system can be continually
updated on-line. The use of Kalman filters
of various kinds for this purpose is becom-
ing increasingly common and successful. The
model may need to be relinearised over the
operating region for the filter to give
reliable estimates of system state. The
filter may also need to update the estimates
of system parameters repeatedly.
Success in the use of Kalman filters for
batch or semi batch systems is strongly
influenced by the degree of realism with
which disturbances to or uncertainties in
the system are represented. MacGregor and
others (1986) stress the importance of
appropriate stochastic representation of
non-stationary disturbances. If attempts are
made to swallow these up in random noise of
larger amplitude biased results can be
obtained. DeVa11iere and Bonvin (1989)
demonstrate success with similar methods for
estimation and Agarwal and Bonvin (1989)
discuss strategies to improve the estimation
of both state and parameters.
In many cases the information available as a
res u lt of the norma 1 beha vour of the system
and naturally occurring deviations about
that normal behaviour may be insufficient to
characterise the model of the system with
sufficient accuracy to carry out appropriate
model based control or optimisation. The
only way to obtain this information may be
by deliberately exciting the system. The
form and nature of the excitation can be
chosen to provide the desired information
most effectively. In experimental equipment
there are no constraints on such excitation
other than those imposed by the equipment
itself. However, if such excitation is
suggested in production facilities careful
evaluation will obviously have to be made of
the potential benefits of the gain in infor-
mation which can be used for improved
control as against possible loss of perfor-
mance ascribable directly to the imposed
excitations.
136 D. W. T . Rippin
5. Master the unknown INFORMATION + OPERATION
The increased information about the system
derived from modelling. reconstructing and
possibly probing can be put to use. If the
system is now sufficiently well known. the
control and optimisation strategies ap-
plicable to known systems that were
discussed initially can be applied.
There has been considerable interest
recently in procedures which first learn
about the system by filtering and estimation
and then apply this knowledge in control or
optimisation algorithms. If the system
changes there can be repeated iteration
between the estimation and control func-
tions . About half of the batch papers in the
present symposium are concerned with varia-
tions of this strategy.
Zhou Hengjie and others (1989) use a recur-
sive procedure at intervals to incorporate
offline information in an online model and
use the results with a non-linear feedback
control algorithm. Contributions from Najim
and co-workers demonstrate the effectiveness
in widely different situations of using
estimations to cope with lack of definition
followed by procedures for tracking desire-
able profiles (de Azevedo and others. 1989;
80rdeneuve. Najim and Babary. 1989;
Rafalimanana. Najim and Casamatta. 1989).
Swanson (1989) discusses the use of a Kalman
filter for disturbance monitoring combined
with a multivariate controller. This is set
within a wider context demonstrating syner-
gistic benefits to the whole process
deriving from reduction in variability of
product quality. Rawlings. Hamer and
Bruemmer (1989) describe an application of
their method in which model identification
and determination of an optimal trajectory
are carried out sequentially. and both use a
common method for solving a non-linear
optimization problem subject to
differential-algebraic constraints. Since
the presence of residual reactants at the
end of the batch incurs a heavy economic
penalty. there is considerable incentive for
trajectory and end point control. Kozub and
MacGregor (1989) follow earlier work already
referred to and describe the application to
semi-batch polymerization of a reiterated
extended Kalman filter followed by a multi-
variate feed back control acting to maintain
a desired open loop control policy.
The applications referred to all combine
estimation and control in a sequential
manner iterating from one to the other or
incorporating updated estimates from time to
time. One might speculate that a model based
estimator could be devised which generates
directly the currently needed control sig-
nals so that control would always be
exercised in an optimal way corresponding to
the current state of knowledge (in the
widest sense) of the system.
However. implementation of this degree of
integration does not appear to have been
reported.
A further step could be to integrate into
the overall optimisation scheme the active
probing for information. The gain in the
quality of control and optimisation at-
tributable to the acquisition of more
information through probing could be traded
off against loss of performance due to the
disturbances caused by excitation. Thus one
could imagine an optimised. continuously
maintained combination of excitation. es-
timation and operational adjustment. It is
not clear that resources are yet available
to properly formulate such a problem of
realistic magnitude and solve it on-line in
real time. However. perhaps more impor-
tantly. it is not clear whether there are
systems for which the advantage derived from
such an integrated strategy would justify
the development and operating resources
required . The relative merits of the in-
tegration or separation of the activities of
probing. estimation. control and optimisa-
tion wi 11 certainly be strongly problem
dependent. To my knowledge no serious ap-
proach has yet been made to this problem.
6. Change the system INNOVATION
When the effects of lack of knowledge about
the system are sufficiently damaging to
justify the development and installation of
procedures of the type described for acquir-
ing and using more information. the question
should be posed whether equivalent benefi-
cial effects could not be achieved by other
means. More control over raw mater i a 1s. the
installation of additional measuring equip-
ment. better training of operators. better
use of historical process data. changes in
the design of the process. or change to a
different process. may in some cases be
equally or more effective at less cost. A
sufficiently broad view must be taken of
process improvement. Control is a means to
an end. but i t is not the only possible
means.
HOW TO JUDGE SUCCESS
It is tempting for a control engineer to be
particularly impressed by. for example. the
sophistication of an on-line estimation. op-
timisation and control scheme of the type
described in category 5. Indeed. there may be
considerable intellectual satisfaction in the
practical realisation of such a scheme.
However. a control scheme is judged in practice
not by its sophistication but by its ap-
propriateness.
A company may carry out its batch operations to
a fixed recipe with no feedback information
because i t knows no better. despite great
potential for improved performance by more
elaborate control. Another company may carry
out operations in the same manner because.
through long experience and painstaking re-
search. it has learned to select processes
which are highly efficient and extremely robust
against disturbances. for which additional
control would be superfluous.
On the other hand. an updated model based on-
line optimization scheme may be found in an
environment where it produces little or no
benefit over a much cruder. more conventional
control scheme.
The question must always be asked: "Is the
control scheme appropriate to the nature of the
operation and the level of knowledge about the
system and its environment that is available or
can be acquired?"
 Control of Batch Processes
This prompts the further question: "Is the
operation and the way it is managed appropriate
to the process in which this operation has to
be realised and the wider environment in which
this process has to operate?"
Appropriateness in a subsystem can only be
judged in the light of how the objectives and
constraints of the wider system impinge upon
the subsystem and determine in what manner
effective contributions to the overall system
can be made.
HOW CAN BETTER CONTROL OF CONSTITUENT
BATCH OPERATIONS IMPROVE THE OVERALL
PROCESS 7
We assume first that a given product is to be
produced by a given process in a defined se-
quence of operations. Each operation, or a sub-
group or cluster of operations, will be carried
out in an equipment item of appropriate type. A
batch of product passes through the equipment
items in sequence. Its maximum size is
restricted by the equipment item having the
smallest capacity for that product. The maximum
frequency of successive batches of the same
product is constrained by the equipment item
with the largest processing time.
We consider what contributions can be made by
improving the control of individual operations.
General questions may be posed:
What performance is requ i red from the
process ••• in terms of product quality,
production rate and cost?
What constrains performance?
What operations are critical for perfor-
mance, e.g. in fixing quality, in
bottlenecking production rate, in dominat-
ing cost?
What can improved control contribute in
these critical operations?
What other measures might be equally or
more effective?
The contribution deriving from improved control
of a particular operation may be considered
with reference to :
1. Can this operation contribute a distinctive
quality characteristic that is not suscep-
tible to change by subsequent processing?
e.g. polymer constiution and properties
(Kozub and MacGregor, 1989)
crystal size distribution (de Azevedo
and others 1989: Eaton and Rawlings,
1989) •
2. Will the quality obtained in this operation
significantly influence the demands made
upon and the quality obtainable from sub-
sequent operations?
e.g. level of byproducts or residual
reactants (Rawl ings, Hamer and
Bruemmer, 1989)
variability of product quality
(Swanson, 1989).
If so, is there a possible trade off be-
tween quality on the one hand and time and
resources assigned to this operation on the
other?
1:17
3. Is reduction of the time needed for the
operation of significant benefit, taking
into account any associated trade off in
quality or resource requirement?
a) for a single independent batch unit the
increase in productivity may be benefi-
cial provided it is not incompatible
with the capacity to produce elsewhere
any necessary intermediates or to
utilize its products elsewhere.
b) for a batch operation in a production
line with other units operating on a
common cycle time:
reduction of time is only of interest
for the unit with the limiting cycle
time
the optimum cycle time for the train
of units is generally longer than
that for any of the units alone
(Hatip10glu, 1985; Rippin, 1983a)
Extension of time is justified since
its benefits are enjoyed by more than
one unit. Optimization of individual
units will not result in the overall
optimum.
c) substantial change in the time required
for an operation may justify recon-
sideration of the clustering or
grouping of operations to be carried
out in the same equipment item, with
corresponding effect on the limiting
cycle time.
4. Wi 11 improvement in control of this opera-
tion contribute significantly to reduction
in dominant costs or in demand for scarce
resources?
BATCH PROCESSING - AN ESTABLISHED MEANS
OF COPING WITH ILL DEFINED SITUATIONS
I have characterised the control of batch
operations in terms of the strategies used to
cope with lack of definition,
e. g. ignore it and act as if the system were
completely known, devise robust methods
for controlling the partially known or
acquire more information.
We gasp with admiration at the struggles, or
the elegance, with which the last bit of infor-
mation is extracted from the system so that the
last cent of optimization can be squeezed out.
And yet, batch processing has been used for
centuries as the obvious means to meet i11-
defined requirements using ill-defined
resources in an ill-defined environment.
The necessary operations for any required
product are carried out in sequence in one or
more equipment items. Batch processing is
intrinsically robust against product change.
Any product that comes along can be made,
provided only the right types of equipment
items are available. Their differing sizes do
not inhibit the manufacture of the product,
only the rate at which it can be produced.
Batch processing is also robust against lack of
knowledge, provided some feedback information
is available which indicates the extent of
progress or end point of an operation. It
doesn't really matter how long it takes
provided only you know when you have arrived.
138 D . W.T.Rip~n
There is no need to balance the throughputs of
the constituent operations as in a continuous
plant. The very wide flexibility of batch
processing is traded off against differing and
possibly variable time uti1izations of the
equipment items. However. this may not be a
very serious price to pay.
The design and operation of batch plants con-
ventionally often proceeds on the basis of
providing general facilities and dealing with
demands for products as they arise. using rules
derived from experience to assign priorities
between products if necessary. The alternative
is to seek more information in advance and use
it to determine the equipment configuration to
be built or the allocation and timing of
production of different products. The useful-
ness of such a procedure depends on the
reliability and stability of demand forecasts
used and the robustness of the design or sched-
uling procedures. Recent work has shown that a
multi-product plant designed by using knowledge
of a probabi1istica11y defined mu1tiproduct
demand distribution can be significantly more
profitable than a plant design using only
average levels of the demands (Reinhart and
Rippin. 1986. 1987). However. the robustness of
this conclusion has not been explored.
In general. mu1tiproduct and multipurpose
plants are by their nature flexible plants but
there is no accepted measure of this
flexibility and hence no precise quantitative
or qualitative recommendations can be made of
how to achieve or improve any level of
flexibility.
Increased information about demand. expressed
as well defined requirements for specific
products. could lead to much more precise
design and better planning of allocation and
control leading to higher utilization of
equipment. However. this might be purchased at
the expense of much greater rigidity - a system
that was not flexible to product change or a
system that was bottle-necked everywhere if
expansion of capacity were required.
If product requirements are not well determined
it may be better to develop clearly identified
bottle necks where attention can be directed
and additional capacity provided if necessary
(Johns. Marketos and Rippin. 1978).
If process characteristics. such as operating
time of an operation are known to have large
variability. it may be necessary to develop
conditional rules for allocation of operations
to equipment so that when an operation is
completed. priority rules are used to determine
what routing the batch follows subsequently as
equipment items become available for the suc-
ceeding operations. If statistical information
is available about the distribution of these
uncertainties such conditional rules can even
be optimised.
A simple configuration of batch equipment is
extremely flexible. Striving for increased
utilization will necessarily inhibit
flexibility. Excessive attention should not be
paid to increased utilization when the oppor-
tunity cost of increased capacity more tha~
justifies expenditure on additional equipment.
CAN CONTROL MAKE OTHER USEFUL
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BATCH PROCESSING 1
We might reflect on what more general contribu-
tions control could make to providing a
f1exlble production capability in an ill-
defined environment.
Could new control capabilities be used to relax
constraints. to give more float or
freedom to operations. to ease peak
demands on resources i.e. to realise the
oppOSite of the rigidity of deterministic
operation?
Could control provide more flexibility in
product change-over - perhaps par-
~icularly for products that are only
lnfrequent1y produced by making better
use of historical data to get the new
batch right first time?
Could more flexibility in rescheduling reduce
delay in responding to new orders or
order changes?
Could more integration between development and
production. perhaps even on-line.
allow preliminary information needed
before production of new or modified
products to be acquired. transmitted and
utilized more quickly?
How far would such acquisition of additional
information have to progress before a
decision to accept production orders
could be taken?
Could production of new or difficult products
be assisted by on-line feed forward of
information from laboratory scale ex-
perimentation to simultaneous industrial
scale production?
CAN THE EXPERIENCE OF BATCH PROCESSING
CONTRIBUTE TO CONTROL 1
In the last decade many chemical producers have
stepped from the relatively stable world of
large continuous plant production to the much
more volatile. turbulent world of mu1tiproduct
specialities where a product which was here
yesterday will be gone tomorrow to be replaced
by others which were not even thought of the
day before yesterday.
Quite a lot of success has been achieved in
reducing this turbulent environment to more
managab1e predictability by applying methods of
modelling. optimization and control developed
for continuous plants. coupled with tools for
scheduling and planning from operational re-
search. They are gradually learning to tame the
tiger of threatening chaos.
However. it should be remembered that estab-
lished batch and speciality producers have long
experience of living with and profiting from
such turbulence. Current sharpening of competi-
tive pressures in these fields changes some of
these circumstances. But the assiduous quan-
tifiers gathering and using more information to
plan more effectively can also profit from the
experiences of these accustomed to riding the
waves of uncertainty who have developed ap-
propriate practices to support themselves.
 Control of Batch Processes
Furthermore, the rigidities and regularities
governing old established commercial operations
are increasingly being dissolved away so that
the whole business environment, not just that
for batch and speciality chemicals, becomes
more chaotic and we are told that we cannot
resist this. "The true objective is to take the
chaos as given and thrive on it. The winners of
tomorrow ••• will look onthe chaos per se as
the source of market advantage, not as a
problem to be got around. Chaos and uncertainty
will be market opportunities for the wise;
capitalizing on fleeting market anomalies will
be the successful business's greatest
accomplishment" (Peters, 1987).
So the world of optimising and controlling
large continuous plants will also become less
predictable, more ill defined and the learning
process must be mutual. As computer modelling
and control techniques are communicated from
the large scale producers to the batch environ-
ment, so the experience of the batch producers
in profiting from turbulence and even chaos
should impinge on the quantifiers and
mode llers.
We have been struggling to tame the tiger of
threatening chaos, we may also profit by learn-
ing to ride the tiger or even, in the
advertising slogan of a less environmentally
sensitive era "put a tiger in the tank" and see
where it takes usl
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am grateful to Dominique Bonvin for numerous
discussions on the topics of this paper.
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TABLE 1. ALTERNATIVE MEANS FOR CONTROLLING A BATCH OPERATION

1. Operate a known system OPERATION
1.1 with pre-specified levels or trajectories of manipulated variables
1.2 following pre-specified levels or trajectories of measured or locally inferred
variables
1.2a) with feedback corrections to compensate for unknown disturbances
1.3 with adjustments calculated to respond to known changes
2. Evaluate sensitivity INFORMATION
2.1 to pre-specified operating conditions
2.2 to disturbances
3. Control the partially known OPERATION
3.1 qualitative lack of definition: fuzzy controls/expert system
3.2 quantitative uncertainty:
3.2.a bounded parameters: interval methods
3.2.b probability distribution: stochastic methods
3.3 robust control strategies
4. Reconstruct the unknown INFORMATION
4.1 improve quality of process information by modelling:
empirical/mechanistic/tendency models
4. la off-line regression/ 4.1b on-line updating
4.1c filtering: state and parameter estimation
4.2 probe process by excitation to improve quality of modelling information
5. Master the unknown INFORMATION + OPERATION
generate information from modelling and use for control and optimization
5.1 sequential implementation of estimation and control
5.2 simultaneous implementation of estimation and control
5.3 continuously maintained combination of excitation. estimation and operational
adjustment for overall optimum performance
6. Change the system I INNOVATION I
Is the control effect worth while in comparison with what else might be done?

Table 2: Suggested Hierarchy of Models for Operating Units
Nature of Model
A) Comprehensive mathematical
model enabling performance
to be predicted as a function
of time and of all significant
operating variables.
B) Performance model enabling
prediction of performance as
a function of permitted
operating time.
C) Model of the time and capacity
requirement to produce a flxed
level of unit performance - may
be dependent on equipment or
batch size.
D) Model of time requirement only.
E) Stochastic model.
COlltrol of Batch Processes 141
Derivation of Model Use of Model
Understanding and modelling of Simulation and optimization of
significant physical and chemical performance of individual equipment
processes taking place. items, possibly also of overall
process performance by flowsheeting
or analogous methods.
Either Co-ordination of operating cycle times
from comprehensive model by fixing of sequences of units.
operating variables at optimal or
other selected values.
Or
empirically, e.g. on basis of
prior process knowledge
Either Equipment sizing and task assignment
from comprehensive or performance
model
Or
by external specification, e.g.
from research or development
activity.
From previous models or Simple sequencing of production.
independently.
May be superposed on any of the
preceding models.