Design online control of Biodiesel Production using Function Block IEC 61499 and Coriolis Flow Meter

In order to complete the transesterification process, online result verification is suitable to the traditional offline verification process based on chromatographic methods. There is a quick analytical method for assessing the biodiesel content of transesterification reaction by applying a correlation with viscosity. The results can substitute chromatographic verifications. The last generation of viscometers enables the possibility of online nonlinear analyses for biodiesel verification process. This type of verification could permit to save hours of biodiesel process production for day but special care must be taken to ensure their perfect operation, e.g., adequate temperature and regulation of the pump velocity. Despite all efforts to avoid such problems, capillary obstruction can occurs and the viscometers provide incorrect values of the mixture viscosity containing biodiesel. This problem is only detected by laboratory analysis, with a considerable time delay. The presented work designs a control solution for online biodiesel production verification using a online application in Function Block IEC 61499 technology and Coriolis viscosity sensors. That solution embeds a neural network into a Function Block 61499 hiding the complexity of nonlinear analyses for the plant integrators.