Time-Optimal Operation of Membrane Processes in the Presence of Fouling with Set-membership Parameter Estimation * *The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic under the grant 1/0053/13 and the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the project APVV-15-0007

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we study a model-based time-optimal operation of a batch diafiltration process in the presence of fouling where the fouling model is adapted on-line using the set-membership (guaranteed) parameter estimation. The membrane fouling poses one of the major problems in the field of membrane separation processes. The studied objective in this paper is to determine a set of all possible combinations of the fouling parameters based on the measured outputs. For this reason guaranteed parameters estimation method is applied with two procedures to determine the best combination of the fouling parameters on-line during the separation. Model-based optimal non-linear control strategy is coupled with parameter estimation method in a simulation case study to show the benefits of the proposed approach.