H∞ Control of a Continuous Crystallizer

Abstract Robustly stabilizing control of an open loop oscillatory crystallization process is considered. The crystallizer is described by a population balance model. From this distributed parameter model an irrational transfer function is obtained which has infinitely many poles and thus represents the infinite-dimensional nature of the system. An infinite-dimensional H ∞ controller synthesis method is applied to solve the weighted mixed sensitivity problem for this transfer function. This procedure results in an irrational controller. For practical implementation, the controller needs to be approximated by a rational transfer function. The effectiveness of the controller is demonstrated in simulations.