Advanced model predictive control strategies for evaporation processes in the pharmaceutical industries

In this paper we present a framework to design control systems for an evaporation process in the pharmaceutical industry with the aim to deliver guaranteed operability for different molecules and under different thermody-namic scenarios. Based on a mathematical model developed within the gPROMS platform calibrated and vali-dated with real data from experiments, three control methods are implemented and compared, (i) Proportional Integrative Derivative control (PID), (ii) Model Predictive Control (MPC) and (iii) explicit/multi-parametric Model Predictive Control (mp-MPC). The performance and limits of the derived control schemes are then established and tested for reference tracking as well as disturbances rejection.