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Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, 16(6)

(2008)

Prediction of Pressure drop of Slurry Flow in Pipeline by Hybrid

Support Vector Regression and Genetic Algorithm Model
S.K. Lahiri* and K.C. Ghanta

Department of Chemical Engineering, NIT, Durgapur, West Bengal, India

Abstract This paper describes a robust support vector regression (SVR) methodology, which can offer superior
performance for important process engineering problems. The method incorporates hybrid support vector regression
and genetic algorithm technique (SVR-GA) for efficient tuning of SVR meta-parameters. The algorithm has been
applied for prediction of pressure drop of solid liquid slurry flow. A comparison with selected correlations in the literature showed that the developed SVR correlation noticeably improved the prediction of pressure drop over a wide
range of operating conditions, physical properties, and pipe diameters.
Keywords support vector regression, genetic algorithm, slurry pressure drop

INTRODUCTION

Conventionally, two approaches namely phenomenological (first principles) and empirical, are
employed for slurry flow modeling. The advantages of
a phenomenological model are: (i) it represents physicochemical phenomenon underlying the process explicitly and (ii) it possesses extrapolation ability. Owing to
the complex nature of many multiphase phase slurry
processes, the underlying physico-chemical phenomenon is seldom fully understood. Also, collection
of the requisite phenomenological information is
costly, time-consuming and tedious, and therefore development and solution of phenomenological process
models poses considerable practical difficulties. These
difficulties necessitate exploration of alternative modeling formalisms.
In the last decade, artificial neural networks
(ANNs) and more recently support vector regression
(SVR) have emerged as two attractive tools for
nonlinear modeling especially in situations where the
development of phenomenological or conventional
regression models becomes impractical or cumbersome. In recent years, support vector regression (SVR)
[1-3] which is a statistical learning theory based machine learning formalism is gaining popularity over
ANN due to its many attractive features and promising empirical performance.
The main difference between conventional ANNs
and support vector machines (SVM) lies in the risk
minimization principle. Conventional ANNs implement the empirical risk minimization (ERM) principle
to minimize the error on the training data, while SVM
adheres to the Structural Risk Minimization (SRM)
principle seeking to set up an upper bound of the generalization error [1].
This study is motivated by a growing popularity
of support vector machines (SVM) for regression
problems. Although the foundation of the SVR paradigm was laid down in mid 1990s, its chemical engineering applications such as fault detection [4, 5] have
emerged only recently.

However, many SVM regression application

studies are performed by expert users having good
understanding of SVM methodology. Since the quality
of SVM models depends on a proper setting of SVM
meta-parameters, the main issue for practitioners trying to apply SVM regression is how to set these parameter values (to ensure good generalization performance) for a given data set. Whereas existing
sources on SVM regression give some recommendations on appropriate setting of SVM parameters, there
is clearly no consensus and (plenty of) contradictory
opinions.
Conventionally, various deterministic gradient
based methods [6] are used for optimizing a process
model. Most of these methods however require that
the objective function should be smooth, continuous,
and differentiable. The SVR models can not be guaranteed to be smooth especially in regions wherein the
input-output data (training set) used in model building
is located sparsely. In such situations, an efficient optimization formalism known as Genetic algorithm
(GA), which is lenient towards the form of the objective function, can be used. The GA was originally developed as the genetic engineering models mimicking
population evolution in natural systems and has been
extensively used in chemical engineering [7-11].
In the present paper, SVR formalism is integrated
with genetic algorithm to automatically determine the
optimal meta-parameters of SVR with the highest
predictive accuracy and generalization ability simultaneously. The strategy (henceforth referred to as
SVR-GA) uses an SVR as the nonlinear process
modeling paradigm, and the GA for optimizing the
meta-parameters of the SVR model such that an improved prediction performance is realized. To our
knowledge, the hybrid involving SVR and GA is being used for the first time for chemical process modeling and optimization. In the present work, we propose a hybrid support vector regression- genetic algorithm (SVR-GA) approach for tuning the SVR
meta-parameters and illustrate it by applying it for
predicting the pressure drop of solid liquid slurry flow.

Received 2008-04-18, accepted 2008-08-16.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: sk_lahiri@hotmail.com

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

2 SUPPORT VECTOR REGRESSION (SVR)

MODELING
2.1

tion object becomes:

Minimize

Support vector regression: at a glance

Consider a training data set g = {( x1 , y1 ),

( x2 , y2 ), ( xP , yP )} , such that xi N is a vector of
input variables and yi is the corresponding scalar
output (target) value. Here, the modeling objective is
to find a regression function, y = f ( x ) , such that it
accurately predicts the outputs {y} corresponding to a
new set of input-output examples, {(x, y)}, which are
drawn from the same underlying joint probability distribution as the training set. To fulfill the stated goal,
SVR considers following linear estimation function.
f ( x) = w, x + b

(1)

where w denotes the weight vector; b refers to a constant known as bias; f(x) denotes a function termed
feature, and w , x represents the dot product in the
feature space, l, such that : x l , w l . The basic
concept of support vector regression is to map
nonlinearly the original data x into a higher dimensional feature space and solve a linear regression
problem in this feature space [1-3].
The regression problem is equivalent to minimize
the following regularized risk function:
R( f ) =

1
1
L ( f ( xi ) yi ) + w

n i =1
2

(2)

where
f ( x ) y , for f ( x) y x
L( f ( x ) y ) =
0,
otherwise

(3)
Equation (3) is also called -insensitive loss function.
This function defines a -tube. If the predicted value is
within the -tube, the loss is zero. If the predicted
value is outside the tube, the loss is equal to the magnitude of the difference between the predicted value
and the radius of the tube. is a precision parameter
representing the radius of the tube located around the
regression function (see Fig. 1); the region enclosed
by the tube is known as -intensive zone.

n
1 2
w + C ( + i* )
2
i =1

(4)

yi w , xi b + i

subject to w , xi + b yi + i*
(5)

*
i , i 0

where the constant C > 0 stands for the penalty degree of the sample with error exceeding . Two positive slack variables i , i* represent the distance from
actual values to the corresponding boundary values of
-tube. The SVR fits f(x) to the data in a manner such
that: (i) the training error is minimized by minimizing
i , i* and, (ii) w2 is minimized to increase the flatness
of f(x) or to penalize over complexity of the fitting
function. A dual problem can then be derived by using
the optimization method to maximize the function:

maximize

1 n
( i* ) j *j
2 i , j =1 i

i =1

i =1

)( x , x )
i

( i + i* ) + yi ( i i* )
subject to

(i i* ) = 0

i =1
*
i , i are

(6)

and 0 i , i* C (7)

where
Lagrange multipliers. Owing to the
specific character of the above-described quadratic
programming problem, only some of the coefficients,
( i* i ) are non-zero and the corresponding input
vectors, xi, are called support vectors (SVs). The SVs
can be thought of as the most informative data points
that compress the information content of the training
set. The coefficients and * have an intuitive interpretation as forces pushing and pulling the regression
estimate f(xi) towards the measurements, yi.
The SVM for function fitting obtained by using
the above-mentioned maximization function is then
given by
n

f ( x ) = ( i i* ) xi , x + b

(8)

i =1

As for the nonlinear cases, the solution can be found

by mapping the original problems to the linear ones in
a characteristic space of high dimension, in which dot
product manipulation can be substituted by a kernel
function, i.e. K ( xi , x j ) = ( xi ) ( x j ) . In this work,
different kernel function is used in the SVR. Substituting K ( xi , x j ) = ( xi ) ( x j ) in Eq. (6) allows us to
reformulate the SVM algorithm in a nonlinear paradigm. Finally, we have
n

Figure 1 A schematic diagram of support vector regression using -sensitive loss function [4]
data points;
points outside tube; support vectors; fitted
by SVR

The SVR algorithm attempts to position the tube

around the data as shown in Fig. 1. By substituting the
-insensitive loss function into Eq. (2), the optimiza-

f ( x ) = ( i i* ) K xi , x + b

(9)

i =1

2.2

Performance estimation of SVR

It is well known that SVM generalization performance (estimation accuracy) depends on a good

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

setting of meta-parameters parameters C, , and kernel

parameters such as kernel type, loss function type and
the kernel parameters. The problem of optimal parameter selection is further complicated by the fact
that SVM model complexity (and hence its generalization performance) depends on all five parameters.
Selecting a particular kernel type and kernel
function parameters is usually based on application-domain knowledge and also should reflect distribution of input (x) values of the training data. Parameter C determines the trade off between the model
complexity (flatness) and the degree to which deviations larger than are tolerated in optimization formulation. For example, if C is too large (infinity), then
the objective is to minimize the empirical risk only,
without regard to model complexity part in the optimization formulation.
Parameter controls the width of the -insensitive
zone, used to fit the training data [1, 3, 12]. The value
of can affect the number of support vectors used to
construct the regression function. The bigger , the
fewer support vectors are selected. On the other hand,
bigger -values result in more flat estimates. Hence,
both C and -values affect model complexity (but in a
different way).
To minimize the generalization error, these parameters should be properly optimized. As evident
from the literature, there is no shortage of (conflicting)
opinions on optimal setting of SVM regression parameters and many such approaches to the choice of C
and are summarized in Cherkassky et al [13]. All the
practical approaches rely on noise estimation in training data which may possible for electrical signals but
very difficult for chemical engineering data or process
parameters. Existing software implementations of
SVM regression usually treat SVM meta-parameters
as user-defined inputs. For a non-expert user it is very
difficult task to choose these parameters as he has no
prior knowledge for these parameters for his data. In
such a situation, user normally relies on trial and error
method. Such an approach apart from consuming
enormous time may not really obtain the best possible
performance. In this paper we present a hybrid
SVR-GA approach, which not only relieve the user
from choosing these meta-parameters but also find out
the optimum values of these parameters to minimize
the generalization error.
3

Owing to these attractive features, GAs is being used

for solving diverse optimization problems in chemical
engineering (see e.g., [7, 8, 10, 11, 14]) .
In the GA procedure, the search for an optimal
solution (decision) vector, x*, begins from a randomly
initialized population of probable (candidate) solutions. The solutions, usually coded in the form of binary strings (chromosomes), are then tested to measure their fitness in fulfilling the optimization objective.
Subsequently, a main loop comprising following operations is performed: (i) selection of better (fitter)
parent chromosomes, (ii) production of an offspring
solution population by crossing over the genetic material between pairs of the fitter parent chromosomes,
and (iii) mutation (bit-flipping) of the offspring strings.
Implementation of this loop generates a new population of candidate solutions, which as compared to the
previous population, usually fares better at fulfilling
the optimization objective. The best string that evolves
after repeating the above described loop till convergence, forms the solution to the optimization problem.
4 GA-BASED OPTIMIZATION OF SVR MODELS

There are different measures by which SVM performance is assessed, but validation and leave-one-out
error estimates are the most commonly used one. Here
we divide the total available data as training data
(75% of data) and test data (25 % data chosen randomly) on which the SVR performance is assessed.
The statistical analysis of SVR prediction is
based on the following performance criteria:
(1) The average absolute relative error (A) on test
data should be minimized:
A=

(2) The standard deviation of error () on test

data should be minimum:

2
1 N
ypred,i yexp,i ) / yexp,i A
(

N 1 1

(3) The cross-correlation coefficient (R) between

input and output should be around unity:

GENETIC ALGORITHM: AT A GLANCE

Genetic Algorithms [14] combine the survival of

the fittest principle of natural evolution with the genetic propagation of characteristics, to arrive at a robust search and optimization technique. Principal features possessed by the GAs are: (i) they are zeroth
order optimization methods requiring only the scalar
values of the objective function, (ii) capability to handle nonlinear, complex and noisy objective functions,
(iii) they perform global search and thus are more
likely to arrive at or near the global optimum, and (iv)
their search procedure being stochastic, GAs do not
impose pre-conditions, such as smoothness, differentiability and continuity on the objective function form.

1 N ypred yexp
y
N 1
exp

R=

( yexp,i yexp )( ypred,i ypred )

i =1

( yexp,i yexp ) ( ypred,i ypred )

i =1

i =1

SVR learning is considered successful only if the

system can perform well on test data on which the
system is not trained. The above five parameters of
SVR are optimized by GA algorithm stated below.
The objective function and the optimization
problem of SVR model of the present study are represented as

min A( x)on test set, X { x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 , x5 }

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

Table 1
Case

Name of kernel

Case 1

linear

Case 2

polynomial

Case 3

Gaussian radial basis function

Case 4

exponential radial basis function

Different kernel type

Equation

k = uv

k = (uv + 1)1p ;
p1 is degree of polynomial
( u v )( u v )

2 p2

k =e
;
p1 is width of radial basis function ()

( u v )( u v )

2 p2

k =e
;
p1 is width of exponential radial basis function ()

Case 5

spline

Case 6

B spline

1
1
z = 1 + uv + uv min(u , v) min(u , v)3 ;
2
6
k = prod( z ) ;
z=0 ;
for r = 0 : 2 * ( p1 + 1)

z = z + (1) r [ 2( p1 + 1)] [ max(0, u v + p1 + 1 r )]

r

2( p1 +1)

end
k = prod( z ) ;
p1 is degree of B spline

Note: u, v are kernel arguments

subject to x1 {0, 10+5 } , x2 = {0 to 1} , x3 = {1, 2} ,

x4 = {1, 2, ,6} , x5 = {1, 2, , 6} .
The objective is minimization of average absolute relative error (AARE) A on test set and X is a solution string representing a design configuration. The
design variable x1 takes any values for C in the range
of 0.0 to 10000. x2 represents the (epsilon) taking
any values in the range of 0.0 to 1. x3 represents the
loss function types: -insensitive loss function and
Huber loss function represented by the numbers 1 and
2 respectively (Table 1). x4 represents the kernel
types: all 6 kernels given in Table 2 represented by
numbers 1 to 6 respectively. The variable x5 takes six
values of the kernel parameters ( represents degree of
polynomials, etc.) in the range 1 to 6. The total number of design combinations with these variables is
100100266 = 720000. This means that if an exhaustive search is to be performed it will take at the
maximum 720000 function evaluations before arriving
at the global minimum A for the test set ( assuming
100 trials for each to arrive optimum C and ). So the
strategy which takes few function evaluations is the
best one. For minimization of A as the objective function, genetic algorithm technique is applied to find the
optimum design configuration of SVR model.
Table 2

Different loss function

Case

Name of loss function

Case 1

-insensitive loss function

Case 2

quadratic loss function

The stepwise procedure for the GA-based optimization of a SVR model is provided in the flowchart
in Fig. 2.

5 CASE STUDY: PREDICTION OF PRESSURE

DROP IN SOLID LIQUID SLURRY FLOW
5.1

Background and importance of pressure drop

Compared to a mechanical transport of slurries,

the use of a pipeline ensures a dust free environment,
demands substantially less space, makes possible full
automation and requires a minimum of operating staff.
Power consumption represents a substantial portion of
the overall pipeline transport operational costs. For that
reason great attention was paid to reduction of the hydraulic losses. The prediction of pressure drop of slurries and the understanding of rhelogical behavior makes
possible to optimize energy and water requirements.
Various investigations [15-19] have tried to show
and propose correlation relating pressure drop with
other parameters of solid-liquid flow namely solids
density, liquid density, particle size, concentration,
pipe diameter, viscosity of flowing media, velocity of
suspension, etc. They find that pressure drop curve
passes through minima (point 3 in Fig. 3) and operation
at this velocity will ensure lowest power consumption.
Despite the large area of application, the available models describing the suspension mechanism do
not completely satisfy engineering needs. To facilitate
the design and scale up of pipelines and slurry pumps,
there is a need for a correlation that can predict slurry
pressure drop over a wide range of operating conditions, physical properties and particle size distributions. Industry needs quick and easily implementing
solutions. The model derived from the first principle is
no doubt the best solution. But in the scenario, where
the basic principles for pressure drop modeling accounting all the interactions for slurry flow is absent,
the numerical model may be promising to give some
quick, easy solutions for slurry pressure drop prediction.
This paper presents a systematic approach using

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

Table 3

Literature sources for pressure drop correlations

No

Author

No

Author

Wilson (1942) [15]

11

Gillies et al. (1983) [28]

2 Durand & Condolios (1952) [20] 12

Roco & Shook(1984) [29]

Newitt et al. (1955) [21]

13

Roco & Shook(1985) [30]

Zandi & Govatos (1967) [22]

14

Ma (1987) [31]

Shook et al.(1968) [23]

15

Hsu (1987) [17]

Schriek et al. (1973) [24]

16

Doron et al. (1987) [32]

7 Scarlett & Grimley (1974) [25]

17

Ghanta (1996) [18]

Turian & Yuan (1977) [26]

18

Gillies et al. (1999) [19]

Wasp et al. (1977) [16]

19

Schaan et al.(2000) [33]

10

Govier & Aziz (1982) [27]

20 Kaushal and Tomita(2002) [34]

have amply quantified the pressure drop of slurry flow

in pipeline. In this work, about 800 experimental
points have been collected from 20 sources spanning
the years 1942-2002 [refer to Table 3]. This wide
range of database includes experimental information
from different physical systems to provide a unified
correlation for pressure drop. Table 4 suggests the wide
range of the collected databank for pressure drop.

Figure 2

Schematic for SVR algorithm implementation

Figure 3 Plot of transitional mixture velocity with pressure drop

robust hybrid SVR-GA techniques to build a pressure

drop correlation from available experimental data.
This correlation has been derived from a broad experimental data bank collected from the open literature [refer to Table 3] (800 measurements covering a
wide range of pipe dimensions, operating conditions
and physical properties).
5.2

Development of the SVR-based correlation

5.2.1

Collection of data
As mentioned earlier, over the years researchers

5.2.2 Identification of input parameters

After extensive literature survey all physical parameters that influence pressure drop are put in a
so-called wish list.
Out of the number of inputs in wish list, we
used support vector regression to establish the best set
of chosen inputs, which describes pressure drop. The
following criteria guide the choice of the set of inputs:
z The inputs should be as few as possible.
z Each input should be highly cross-correlated
to the output parameter;
z These
inputs
should
be
weakly
cross-correlated to each other;
z The selected input set should give the best
output prediction, which is checked by using statistical analysis [e.g. average absolute relative error A,
standard deviation].
While choosing the most expressive inputs, there
is a compromise between the number of inputs and
prediction. Based on different combinations of inputs,
trial and error method was used to finalize the input
set which gives reasonable low prediction error A
when exposed to support vector regression.
Based on the above analysis, the input variables
such as pipe diameter, particle diameter, solids concentration, solid and liquid density and viscosity of
liquid have been finalized to predict pressure drop in
slurry pipeline. Table 4 shows the typical range of data
selected for support vector regression.
6

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As the magnitude of inputs and outputs greatly

differ from each other, they are normalized in -1 to +1
scale by the formula

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

Table 4

Slurry system and parameter range from the literature data

Pipe diameter
D/m

Particle diameter
dp/m

Liquid density

L/kgm 3

Solids density

S/kgm 3

Liquid viscosity
/mPas

Velocity U

/ms 1

Solids concentration
(volume fraction) f

0.019-0.495

38.3-13000

1000-1250

1370-2844

0.12-4

0.86-4.81

0.014-0.333

Slurry system: coal/water, copper ore/water, sand/water, gypsum/water, glass/water, gravel/water.

xnormal =

2x xmax xmin
xmax xmin

Table 5 (Continued)
Input

75% of total dataset was chosen randomly for training

and rest 25% was selected for validation and testing.
Seven parameters were identified as input (Table 5)
Table 5

Typical input and output data for SVR training

Input
S/
/
U/
L/

kgL 1 kgL 1 mPas ms 1

Output

dp/dz/Pam 1

D/
cm

dp/
m

2.54

40.1

1.00

2.84

0.85

1.06

0.07

560.00

2.54

40.1

1.00

2.84

0.85

1.13

0.07

600.00

2.54

40.1

1.00

2.84

0.85

1.15

0.07

600.00

1.90

40.1

1.00

2.84

0.85

1.10

0.07

1250.00

1.90

40.1

1.00

2.84

0.85

1.50

0.07

1500.00

1.90

40.1

1.00

2.84

0.85

1.70

0.07

1700.00

5.26

38.3

1.00

2.33

1.00

1.11

0.11

294.10

5.26

38.3

1.00

2.33

1.00

3.01

0.11

1651.30

5.26

38.3

1.00

2.33

1.00

4.81

0.11

3822.90

5.26

38.3

1.00

2.33

1.00

1.33

0.31

542.90

5.26

38.3

1.00

2.33

1.00

3.12

0.31

2352.60

5.26

38.3

1.00

2.33

1.00

4.70

0.31

4727.70

20.85

190.0

1.00

1.37

1.14

2.59

0.33

266.50

20.85

190.0

1.00

1.37

1.14

2.34

0.33

226.30

20.85

190.0

1.00

1.37

1.14

2.01

0.33

177.30

20.85

190.0

1.00

1.37

1.14

1.78

0.33

147.00

20.85

190.0

1.00

1.37

1.14

1.59

0.32

123.40

20.85

190.0

1.00

1.37

1.14

1.37

0.33

99.90

5.15

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

1.66

0.07

666.20

5.15

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.78

0.09

2449.20

5.15

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

1.66

0.17

901.30

5.15

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

4.17

0.19

3428.90

5.15

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

1.66

0.27

1136.40

5.15

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

4.33

0.29

4408.10

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

2.90

0.09

261.60

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.50

0.09

334.10

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

2.90

0.18

305.70

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.50

0.17

382.10

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

2.90

0.26

355.60

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.50

0.26

453.60

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

2.90

0.33

414.40

26.30

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.50

0.32

526.10

49.50

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.16

0.09

143.00

L/
S/
/
U/

kgL 1 kgL 1 mPas ms 1

Output

dp/dz/Pam

D/
cm

dp/
m

49.50

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.76

0.09

186.10

49.50

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.07

0.17

157.70

49.50

165.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.76

0.26

254.70

15.85

190.0

1.00

2.65

1.30

2.50

0.14

475.20

15.85

190.0

1.00

2.65

1.30

2.50

0.29

630.90

15.85

190.0

1.00

2.65

0.12

3.00

0.13

648.90

15.85

190.0

1.00

2.65

0.12

2.90

0.28

866.70

5.07

520.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

1.90

0.09

1175.60

5.07

520.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

2.00

0.21

1763.40

4.00

580.0

1.25

2.27

4.00

2.88

0.16

3926.00

4.00

580.0

1.25

2.27

4.00

2.70

0.14

3580.00

4.00

580.0

1.25

2.27

4.00

2.01

0.10

2217.00

4.00

580.0

1.25

2.27

4.00

1.05

0.06

845.00

26.30 13000.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

3.20

0.04

842.50

26.30 13000.0

1.00

2.65

1.00

4.00

0.04

989.50

for SVR and the pressure drop is put as target. These

data then exposed to hybrid SVR-GA model described
above. After optimization of five SVR parameters described above, the model output was summarized in
Table 6. The parity plot for experimental and predicted
pressure drop is shown in Fig. 4. The low A (12.7%)
may be considered as an excellent prediction performance considering the poor understanding of slurry
flow phenomena and large databank for training comprising various systems. Fig. 5 represents a comparitive study of present model and Kaushal model [34]
against experimental data of Ghanta [31]. The figure
clearly represents the improvement of model prediction as compared to Kaushal model especially at low
velocity range. The optimum value of SVR
meta-parameters were summarized in Table 7, clearly
showing that there exists almost 4 different feasible
solutions which lead to same prediction error.
Table 6

Prediction error by SVR based model

A

training

0.125

0.163

0.978

testing

0.127

0.169

0.977

The final equation is as follows: Pressure

drop = K (i, j ) * B + b

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

Figure 4 Experimental vs predicted pressure drop for exponential radial basis function (erbf) kernel

Figure 5 Comparison of SVR-GA model, Kaushal model

and experimental pressure drop [31]
experimental; SVR-GA model; Kaushal [34]

where K(i, j) is the kernel function

( Ist ( i ,7 )Trn ( j ,7 )*)(Tst ( i ,7 ) Trn ( j ,7 ) )

2 p12

for i = 1 to n and j = 1 to m
and n = number of test record, m = number of training record (600 in this case), Tst is a n7 matrix for
testing input (which user want to test for calculating
pressure drop) and should be arrange in a sequence
similar to Table 5, Trn is a 6007 matrix for training
input data which is arranged in a sequence similar to
Table 5, B is a 6001 matrix calculated during training

Table 7

and b is zero for this case, p1 is width of rbfs (which

can be found as kernel parameter in Table 7)#.
In a separate study, we exposed the same dataset
to SVR algorithm only (without the GA algorithm)
and try to optimize the different parameters based on
exhaustive search. We found that it was not possible to
reach the best solutions starting from arbitrary initial
conditions. Especially the optimum choice of C and
is very difficult to arrive after starting with some discrete value. Many times the solutions got stuck up in
sub optimal local minima. These experiments justified
the use of a hybrid technique for SVR parameter tuning. The best prediction after exhaustive search along
with SVR parameters was summarized in Table 8.
From the table it is clear that even after 720000 runs,
the SVR algorithm is unable to locate the global
minima and the time of execution is 4 h in Pentium 4
processor. On the other hand, the hybrid SVR-GA
technique is able to locate the global minima with
2000 runs within 1 h. The prediction accuracy is also
much better. Moreover it relieves the non expert users
to choose the different parameters and find optimum
SVR meta-parameters with a good accuracy.
All the 800 experimental data collected from open
literature was also exposed to different formulas and
correlations for pressure drop available in open literature
and AARE were calculated for each of them (Table 9).
From Table 9, it is evident that prediction error of pressure drop has reduced considerably in the present work.

Optimum parameters obtained by hybrid SVR- GA algorithm

No

Kernel type

Type of loss function

Kernel parameter

5043.82

0.50

erbf

-insensitive

0.127

6698.16

0.36

erbf

-insensitive

0.127

7954.35

0.48

erbf

-insensitive

0.127

8380.98

0.54

erbf

-insensitive

0.127

9005.8

0.59

erbf

-insensitive

0.127

Table 8 Comparison of performance of SVR-GA hybrid model Vs SVR model

Performance criteria
A

Execution time/h

prediction performance by hybrid SVR-GA model

0.127

0.169

0.977

prediction performance by SVR model without GA tuning after exhaustive search

0.132

0.170

0.975

Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 2008

Table 9 Performance of different correlations to
predict pressure drop

No

Author

A/%

Wilson (1942) [15]

49.51

Durand & Condolios (1952) [16]

36.53

Newitt et al. (1955) [17]

93.43

10

Zandi & Govatos (1967) [18]

50.02

Shook et al. (1968) [19]

34.50

Turian & Yuan (1977) [22]

39.97

Wasp et al. (1977) [23]

26.68

Gillies et al. (1999) [32]

22.31

Kaushal & Tomita (2002) [34]

22.01

10

present work

12.70

CONCLUSIONS

Support Vector Machines regression methodology with a robust parameter tuning procedure has
been described in this work. The method employs a
hybrid SVR- GA approach for minimizing the generalization error. Superior prediction performances were
obtained for the case study of pressure drop and a
comparison with selected correlations in the literature
showed that the developed SVR correlation noticeably
improved prediction of pressure drop over a wide
range of operating conditions, physical properties, and
pipe diameters. The proposed hybrid technique
( SVR-GA) also relieve the non-expert users to choose
the meta-parameters of SVR algorithm for his case
study and find out optimum value of these
meta-parameters on its own. The results indicate that
SVR based technique with the GA based parameters
tuning approach described in this work can yield excellent generalization and can be advantageously employed for a large class of regression problems encountered in process engineering.
NOMENCLATURE
A
, *

,*

average absolute relative error

vectors of Lagranges multiplier
precision parameter
regularization constant
slack variables
width of kernel of radial basis function

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