Artificial intelligent control for a novel advanced microwave biodiesel reactor

Abstract

Biodiesel, an alternative diesel fuel made from a renewable source, is produced by the transesterification of vegetable oil or fat with methanol or ethanol. In order to control and monitor the progress of this chemical reaction with complex and highly nonlinear dynamics, the controller must be able to overcome the challenges due to the difficulty in obtaining a mathematical model, as there are many uncertain factors and disturbances during the actual operation of biodiesel reactors. Classical controllers show significant difficulties when trying to control the system automatically. In this paper we propose a comparison of artificial intelligent controllers, Fuzzy logic and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System(ANFIS) for real time control of a novel advanced biodiesel microwave reactor for biodiesel production from waste cooking oil. Fuzzy logic can incorporate expert human judgment to define the system variables and their relationships which cannot be defined by mathematical relationships. The Neuro-fuzzy system consists of components of a fuzzy system except that computations at each stage are performed by a layer of hidden neurons and the neural network's learning capability is provided to enhance the system knowledge. The controllers are used to automatically and continuously adjust the applied power supplied to the microwave reactor under different perturbations. A Labview based software tool will be presented that is used for measurement and control of the full system, with real time monitoring.