2011 Sixth International Conference on Bio-Inspired Computing: Theories and Applications

Multiple Input-Single Output (MISO) Feedforward Artificial Neural Network

(FANN) Models for Pilot Plant Binary Distillation Column
Z. Abdullah1

Z, Ahmad2 and N, Aziz3,*

Faculty of Chemical Engineering

Universiti Teknologi MARA,
40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
zalizawati8653@salam.uitm.edu.my

2,3

School of Chemical Engineering

Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Seri Ampangan,14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia
2
chzahmad@eng.usm.my,*3chnaziz@eng.usm.my

AbstractDistillations column control becomes the main

subject of control research due to the intensive energy usage
in the industry and the nonlinearity behavior in control
variables. The growing importance of green technology
and sustainability has triggered researchers to focus on this
matter. Therefore, a method of modeling and controlling of
the column is certainly indispensible in this matter. Neural
networks are a powerful tool especially in modeling
nonlinear and intricate process. Hence, in this paper
Feedforward Artificial Neural network (FANN) have been
chosen to model the multiple input-single output (MISO) for
the distillation column predicting top and bottom
composition. The performance and the accuracy of the
models have been presented in term of correlation coefficient
(R value) and the smallest sum squared error (SSE). It has
been found that FANN can model MISO in representing the
process. The results obtained also show that the MISO model
is suitable to be used to represent the distillation process
accurately.

result, the output of the process will always be equal to

the desired output. This means that the model based
control design has the potential to provide perfect control
[3].
Recently, there has been a growing interest in the
modeling of nonlinear relationship of the distillation
column using neural network [4]. Neural network
technique is one of the most useful data driven model that
can be utilized in nonlinear model based control system.
The neural network provide powerful analysis properties
such as complex processing of large input-output
information arrays, representing complicated nonlinear
associations among data and the ability to generalize.
Because of the nonlinear dynamic behavior of distillation
column, development of multi output neural network
model frequently tend to produced less accurate model in
representing distillation process. Since most of the neural
network model developed involved only several output,
development a set of MISO network model are expected
to give a better performance compared to neural network
model with multi output. In this manner, the motivation of
this paper is to develop MISO network models for
distillation process using feed forward neural network
(FANN) based on real pilot plant binary distillation
column of methanol and water. The paper is organized as
follows. Section 2 presents the case study of the system.
Some results and discussions on the case study are given
in Section 3. Finally, the last section concludes this paper.

Keywords-Feedforward Artificial Neural network (FANN);

Multiple Input-single output (MISO); Distillation column

I.

INTRODUCTION

Distillation is one of the most important unit operations

in the chemical industry. It plays a key role to split an
input stream of chemical species into two or more output
streams of desired and useful chemical species and is
usually the most economical method for separating
liquids, and consists of a process of multi-stage
equilibrium separations. Distillation columns are fairly
complex units and exhibit nonlinear dynamic behavior
due to their nonlinear vapor liquid equilibrium
relationships, the complexity processing configurations
(e.g., prefractionators, sidestreams and multiple feeds) and
high product purities [1]). The dynamics of the distillation
column that is variations in time constants with the size
and direction of an input change are caused by a mixture
of very fast vapor flowrate changes, moderately fast liquid
flowrate changes, slow temperature changes and very
slow composition changes [2].
Advanced control strategies such as model based
control have been revealed as the better control systems to
improve product yield, reduce energy consumption,
increase capacity, improve product quality and
consistency, increase responsiveness and improve process
safety of distillation columns. The performance of modelbased controller is mostly determined by its model. If the
model is accurate and if its inverse exists then process
dynamics can be cancelled by the inverse model. As a
978-0-7695-4514-1/11 $26.00 2011 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/BIC-TA.2011.21

II.

CASE STUDY: PILOT PLANT BINARY

DISTILLATION COLUMN

The system which was studied was a pilot plant

distillation column which consisted of 15 trays, a reboiler
and a condenser and this is shown in Figure 1. A
methanol-water binary mixture was used as feed to the
column and it was fed at the eighth tray from the bottom.
The temperatures were measured at tray 2, tray 6, tray 10,
tray 14 and the bottom and top products stream. The
column parameters are shown in Table 1. Distillation
column has been chosen for this study as efficient and
rigorous model is required due to existence of multiple
interactions among many variables in this process.
The general first principle model for the distillation
column which was developed consisted of a non-ideal
column, a non-ideal mixture and a non-equimolal
overflow [5]. The development of this general first
principle model involved mass balance, component
157

balance and enthalpy balance equations, the vapor-liquid

phase equilibrium and liquid-hydraulic relationship
resulting in 47 differential equations and sets of algebraic
equations. The nonideality of the distillation is performed
using UNIFAC for activity coefficient and Peng-Robinson
for fugacity coefficient. The system which was studied
was a distillation column consisted of 15 trays, a reboiler
and a condenser which separate methanol-water binary
mixture.

In development of process model, the nonlinearity as

well as dynamic behavior of the process should be taken
into account. Using the current and past (historical)
sample of each variables permit for a limited degree of
gradient information i.e. are given an idea of the recent
rates of changes of each variable, will provide useful in
light of dynamic systems, though it is not apparent that
this particular choice is optimal [6]. Since the distillation
process is a dynamic system, it is necessary to feed the
neural network with past historical data.
III.

MISO NEURAL NETWORK DEVELOPMENT

The FANN were trained by the Levenberg-Marquardt

optimisation algorithm. Hidden neurons use the sigmoid
activation function whereas output layer neurons use the
linear activation function. The structure of the neural
network is shown in Figure 2. To cope with different
magnitudes in the input and output data, all the data were
normalised. The data for neural network model building
need to be divided into: 1) Training data (for network
training); 2) Validation data (for cross-validation based
network structure selection); and 3). Testing data (unseen
data for evaluation of the final selected model).
The number of hidden neurons was determined through
cross validation. Single hidden layer neural networks with
different numbers of hidden neurons were trained on the
training data and tested on the validation data. The
network with the lowest SSE on the validation data was
considered as having the best network topology. In
assessing the developed models, SSE on the unseen data
is used as the performance criterion.

Fig 1: Pilot plant distillation column

Since lack of reliable data processing leads to
inaccuracy to the model developed, different patterns of
input variables were generated in order to provide
sufficient information to identify the dynamic nonlinear
behavior of the distillation column. Several reboiler heat
input and reflux flowrate profiles were designated to
excite the first principle model and the changes were
made simultaneously for these two variables. The profiles
considered were random, step change, staircase and
pseudo random multilevel sequence. Seven sets of data
with different reflux flowrate and reboiler heat input
profiles were generated from the simulation of the general
first principle model. The reboiler heat input was varied
from 11.25kW to 12.75kW and the reflux flowrate was
varied from 0.54kmol/hr to 1.08kmol/hr.

Output units

Input units

Fig.2 : FANN structure

In this study, the inputs to the neural network models

considered were the past value of the top and bottom
compositions data, reflux rate (R) and reboiler heat input
(QR) at two time instants, reboiler temperature (TB) and
condenser temperature (TD) at three time instant and four
tray temperatures; T2, T6, T10 and T14. The past values
of the variables were included as model inputs due to the
fact that the chemical process variables were always autocorrelated. The MISO model can be presented as the
following function respectively:

Table 1: Column parameters

Parameters
Values
Number of trays
15
Feed tray number
8
Column Diameter
10.8 cm
Weir height
2 cm
Weir length
8.3 cm
Reflux drum hold up
0.015 m3
Reboiler hold up
0.007 m3

158

training and validation data. This was carried out in order

to confirm the performance of the network selected [7].

xD (t ) = f [ xD(t 1), R(t ), R(t 1), QR (t ), QR (t 1),TD (t ),

TD (t 1),TD (t 2),TB (t ),TB (t 1),TB (t 2),T14 (t ),T10 (t ),

(1)

T6 (t ),T2 (t )]

0.0003
Data 5

x B (t ) = f [ xD(t 1), R(t ), R(t 1), QR (t ), QR (t 1), TD (t ),

Average

(2)

S u m S q u a re d E rro r

TD (t 1), TD (t 2), TB (t ), TB (t 1), TB (t 2), T14 (t ), T10 (t ),

T6 (t ), T2 (t )]

IV.

Data 6

0.00025

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

It is well known that the dynamics of distillation

column is highly nonlinear. In this case study the number
of hidden neurons was determined through cross
validation as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4 where the
numbers of hidden neurons were 19 and 20 for top and
bottom composition respectively and the 15 input and 1
output for both. Table 2 and Table 3 tabulate the
correlation coefficient, the R-value between the validation
data and the neural network output.

0.0002

0.00015

smallest average
sum squared error

0.0001

0.00005

0
15

16

17

15-19-1

Correlation coefficient, Rvalue

Data 6
Data 5
0.996
0.980

S u m S q u a re d E rro r

Average

0.994
0.998
0.999
1.000
0.996
0.983
0.999
0.999
0.998
0.996

0.998

0.999

15-21-1

0.996

0.970

0.983

15-25-1

0.997

0.989

0.993

24

25

Data 6
Average

0.003
0.0025
0.002
smallest average
sum squared error

0.0015

0.0005
0
19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Number of Neurons

Fig. 4. Effect of neuron numbers on the ANN for

MISO (bottom product composition)
The testing results for the MISO models are
summarized in Table 4 while the performance of the
model during the testing process for the top and bottom
product compositions estimation using the MISO models
are illustrated in Figure 5 respectively. The figure shows
the deviation of the current value of the top and bottom
product compositions in the particular time instant from
the steady state value for the testing data and the neural
network output.

0.988

1.000

23

0.001

Average

15-20-1

22

Data 5
0.004

Table 3. R-value of MISO model for different numbers of

hidden neurons (bottom product composition)
Architecture

21

0.0045

Table 2. R-value of MISO model for different numbers of

hidden neurons (top product composition)

15-15-1
15-17-1
15-18-1
15-19-1
15-20-1
15-21-1
15-22-1
15-23-1
15-24-1
15-25-1

20

Fig. 3. Effect of neuron numbers on the ANN for MISO (top

product composition)

0.0035

Correlation coefficient, Rvalue

Data 5
Data 6
0.997
0.992
0.999
0.998
0.999
0.999
1.000
1.000
0.997
0.995
0.985
0.981
0.999
0.999
0.999
0.999
0.997
0.999
0.995
0.996

19

Number of Neurons

The correlation coefficient is a normalized measure of

the strength of the linear relationship between two
variables. Correlation coefficients which are close to -1 or
+1 indicate a strong correlation. The R-value and SSE of
the validation process for the MISO model for estimating
the top and bottom product composition are shown in
Table 2 and 3 respectively.

Architecture

18

Based on the performance results obtained, the

optimum MISO network structure was established with
19 and 21 hidden neurons for top and bottom product
composition respectively. In order to observe a better
network generalization ability, MISO networks were
tested with testing data which was independent of the

159

able to predict the top and bottom composition accurately

even though the nonlinearity of the system is high.

Table 4. Validation results for MISO model

Name

Top
product
comp.
Bottom
product
comp.

Corr.
coefficient,
R-value

Validation
SSE (x 10-4)

15-19-1

0.999

0.03

15-20-1

0.996

6.86

Architecture

V.

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, FANN MISO model structures were

developed to represent the distillation column accurately.
The results showed that the set of MISO model was able
of representing the distillation column since they were
able in capturing the nonlinearity and complexity of the
distillation column based on their ability to generalize
during the validation and testing processes. The study
showed that the best network model in MISO are
networks model which consisted of 19 neurons and 20
neurons which was used to estimate the top and bottom
product compositions. This observation was based on its
performance with R-values of 1 and 0.999 and SSEs of
2.09x10-6 and 7.40x10-5 when applied on the validation
data. In the testing process, the R-values were 0.999 and
0.996 and the SSEs were 0.30x10-5 and 6.86x10-4.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support
from Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation
(MOSTI), Malaysia through the IRPA 8 project No: 0302-4279EA019
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Fig. 5. Validation data performance of MISO model

The MISO models were found to be able to predict the

top and bottom product composition precisely. From the
figures, it was observed that the model output closely
followed the testing data trends. This was strongly
supported by the strong correlation between the model
output and the testing data with R-value of 0.999 and SSE
of 0.30x10-5 for the top product composition. The R-value
of 0.996 and SSE of 6.86x10-4 were obtained for the
estimation of the bottom product composition. From the
testing results it was observed that the MISO model was

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