Elevating Model Predictive Control Using Feedforward Artificial Neural Networks: A Review

Process control in the field of chemical engineering has always been a challenging task for the chemical engineers. Hence, the majority of processes found in the chemical industries are non-linear and in these cases the performance of the linear models can be inadequate. Recently a promising alternative modelling technique, artificial neural networks (ANNs), has found numerous applications in representing non-linear functional relationships between variables. A feedforward multi-layered neural network is a highly connected set of elementary non-linear neurons. Model-based control techniques were developed to obtain tighter control. Many model-based control schemes have been proposed to incorporate a process model into a control system. Among them, model predictive control (MPC) is the most common scheme. MPC is a general and mathematically feasible scheme to integrate our knowledge about a target, process controller design and operation, which allows flexible and efficient exploitation of our understanding of a target, and thus produces optimal performance of a system under various constraints. The need to handle some difficult control problems has led us to use ANN in MPC and has recently attracted a great deal of attention. The efficacy of the neural predictive control with the ability to perform comparably to the non linear neural network strategy in both set point tracking and disturbance rejection proves to have less computation expense for the neural predictive control. The neural network model predictive control (NNMPC) method has less perturbations and oscillations when dealing with noise as compared to the PI controllers.