LINEAR AND NONLINEAR ADAPTIVE-CONTROL OF ALCOHOLIC FERMENTATION PROCESS - EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

This paper deals with the experimental implementation of several control algorithms on a continuous flow fermentation process. The regulation and tracking problems of the substrate concentrations are considered. Our objective is to show the advantages and drawbacks of these algorithms in tracking and regulation behaviour, overshoot, knowledge contribution, number of tuning parameters, etc. The different controllers described in this paper are the PI controller, the non-linear adaptive L/A algorithm, the linear adaptive controller (predictive control with partial state reference model) and the adaptive controller based on the non-linear structure of the process model (pole placement control). These controllers are applied to a pilot-scale fermentation system with satisfactory results.