Testing Laguerre-Volterra Model in a Batch Reactor

Carlos Medina-Ramos

Huber Nieto-Chaupis

Centro de Tecnologas de Informacion

y Comunicaciones CTIC-UNI
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniera
Lima - Peru
Email: ccmedina@uni.edu.pe

Facultad de Ingeniera Electrica y Electronica

Seccion de Postgrado y Segunda Especializacion
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniera
Lima - Peru
Email: huber nieto@hotmail.es

AbstractWe report an application of the formalism of

Laguerre-Volterra to model the temperature of a batch reactor
in a chemical plant. To reduce substantially costs during the
preparation of melamine resin, this study focuses on the initial
phase where an efficient controllability of the heat provided
to reactor is needed. This analysis have shown an acceptable
agreement between model and data supporting the idea that the
batch reactor presents interesting prospects to be automated by
using mathematical models containing orthogonal polynomials.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Mathematical methodologies in advanced control have
played a crucial role to understand complex nonlinear systems
realized at industrial processes along the last decades [1].
Often one needs to know the internal dynamics in real systems
from the I/O data. Mathematically speaking, the description
of systems can be possible by using the master equation

y(t) = Ox(t),

(1)

contains information about properties of system. In

where O
those cases what are characterized by delays, sometimes a
reasonable choice is that of the Volterra series expansion,
which in concrete assumes that the input is operated in the
following way [2],
y(t) =

j [x(t)],
H

(2)

j=1

j denotes the Volterra operator of order j which is

where H
evaluated to time invariant nonlinear systems. Recent reports
have indicated some advantages in applying this formalism to
identify nonlinear systems with memory such as behavioral
modelling for radio frequency power amplifier analysis [3].
Other studies have considered to expand the Volterra kernels in
discrete-time Laguerre polynomials to reduce the large number
of parameters which is one of the disadvantages of (2) [4]. In
fact, whereas the usage of Volterra series leads to define a
strategy to identify nonlinear processes, the projection of the
kernel onto Laguerre polynomial basis allows to formulate
a scheme containing a reduced number of parameters to be
identified. In particular, in a chemical reactor whose temperature should be efficiently controlled, a suitable identification
of process is desirable, specifically from the initial phase
which is of enormous importance. Our case focuses in a batch
reactor aimed to produce melamine resin in PISOPAK PERU

978-1-4244-5697-0/10/$25.00 2010 IEEE

141

S.A.C, a chemical facility located at Lima. Due to reasons

of costs of production and quality, the internal temperature in
this reactor should be monitored. In other words an excellent
controllability of internal temperature is needed. In this report
we have tested the truncated Laguerre-Volterra expansion
for identification of a nonlinear system. The main goal is
to investigate the feasibility for modelling and therefore to
evaluate the automatization of system. It is realized with data
acquired from the plant and confronted to the proposed model.
The results have yielded interesting prospects to automate
the controllability of heat provided to reactor accurately. It
constitutes a positive fact since the necessity in to optimize
the productivity in this kind of facilities turns out to be of
great importance [5]. This paper is structured as follows:
second section gives the main mathematical relations which
were used to identify the process under study. We started
with the Volterra expansion in the discrete case. Thus, the
Laguerre vectors are introduced leading to express the output
as functions of Laguerre polynomials multiplied by real coefficients. The case when a multilevel signal as input function is
considered. A point of importance in our hypothesis is that of
the identification of nonlinear systems through the LaguerreVolterra approach can be achieved in terms of their diagonal
entries. Hence, the extraction of the coefficients through a
computational procedure is performed. It is verified that the
modelling adjusts the observed thermodynamics properly. In
third section, data and model are analized regarding their
behavior whereas in a fourth section conclusions are drawn.
II. T HE U SAGE OF THE L AGUERRE -VOLTERRA M ODEL
The starting point is the description of model by written
the original definition of a Volterra series in its fundamental
definition,
Z
y(t) =
h(1 )x(1 t)d1 +
Z Z
h(1 , 2 )x(1 t)x(2 t)d1 d2 +
Z Z Z
h(1 , 2 , 3 )x(1 t)x(2 t)x(3 t)d1 d2 d3
+O(> 3)

(3)

that is in essence the definition (2) [6]. The functions h(i ) and
x(i t) describe the kernel and delayed function respectively.

where i denote a L-dimensional Laguerre orthogonal basis.

The ci are real numbers and emerge as result of the projection
of the Volterra kernel onto the Laguerre space. Roughtly
speaking, the usage of the Laguerre expansion (5-7) allows
that the Volterra kernels as defined in (4) become reduced
considerably. It is because the Laguerre polynomials transfer
their orthogonal nature to the Volterra kernels. In other words,
most of them are canceled in according to the orthogonality
in the sense of the inner product.
We note that the coefficients are unknown variables and the
main goal is now to figure out a scheme to extract them. To
be more specific, the expansion (4) used in conjunction to the
kernels expanded in Laguerre polynomials should be truncated
for computational ends. Thus in our calculations up to third
order have been considered. The number of points is truncated
in both N=87 (T=30 s) and N=130 (T=20 s), where N denotes
the upper limit to be used in (4).
Our hypothesis consists in to keep only those diagonal terms
which might be enough to system identification. Therefore our
approach reads
y(k)

N
k1 =1 c1 1 (k1 )x(k k1 ) + c2 2 (k1 )x(k k1 )
+c3 3 (k1 )x(k k1 )

2
2
2
2
+N
k1 =1 c11 1 (k1 )x (k k1 ) + c22 2 (k1 )x (k k1 )

+c33 23 (k1 )x2 (k k1 )

3
3
3
3
+N
k1 =1 c111 1 (k1 )x (k k1 ) + c222 2 (k1 )x (k k1 ),

Fig. 1. Illustration of a truncated Laguerre-Volterra model up to third order.

The i functions denote the orthogonal Laguerre polynomials.

In (3) the output is composed by an infinite amount of terms

where each one is accompanied of kernels.
R In this work the
truncated discrete case is used, so that
up to third
order. As it is well-known the discrete case is in praxis the
most convenient one. Thus, an alternative way to write the
Volterra expansion reads
y(t) =

1 h(1 )x(1 t) +

1 2 h(1 , 2 )x(1 t)x(2 t) +

1 2 3 h(1 , 2 , 3 )x(1 t)x(2 t)x(3

t),
(4)

where j covers all values. It is clear that the inclusion of

higher orders will make a precise prediction but on the other
hand, the calculation of the Volterra kernels turns out to
be complicated. Although (4) is quite efficient for system
identification as reported by various authors, it is known from
several authors that a relative precision might be acquired for
certain kinds of systems if the Volterra kernels are projected
onto a orthogonal finite Laguerre basis [7] [8]. Translated in
a formal language, we have
h(k1 ) = L
j cj j (k1 )

(5)

L
h2 (k1 , k2 ) = L
j l cjl j (k1 )l (k2 )

(6)

h3 (k1 , k2 , k3 ) =

L L
L
j l n cjln j (k1 )l (k2 )n (k3 ),

(7)

142

+c333 33 (k1 )x3 (k k1 ),

(8)

where the i are the Z 1 -transformed of the orthogonal

Laguerre polynomials. Throughout this study the Laguerre
pole varies between 0.974 and 0.981. This range is fixed
by considerations purely of analicity. In fig. 1 is drawn the
diagram of blocks corresponding to y(k) as expressed in (8).
For the sake of the simplicity first and second order were not
displayed, instead only third order Laguerre-Volterra model is
depicted. In the following, the main goal is to determine the
values of 3, 6, and 9 unknown coefficients corresponding to
first, second and third order respectively. Of course, another
manner is that of keeping all contributions when (5-7) are
replaced in (4), nevertheless in our approximation we try to
demonstrate that only a small amount of elements of the multidimensional matrix is enough to identify the phenomenology
in reactor.
A. Extraction of the Kernels
The output y(k) what are measured as effect of the multilevel signal (k) for the first order system, can be written in
the following way
y(1)
y(2)
y(3)
.
.
y(k)

= c1 1 (1)(1)+ c2 2 (1)(1)+ c3 3 (1)(1)

= c1 1 (2)(2)+ c2 2 (2)(2)+ c3 3 (2)(2)
= c1 1 (3)(3)+ c2 2 (3)(3)+ c3 3 (3)(3)
.
.
.
.
.
.
= c1 1 (k)(k)+ c2 2 (k)(k)+ c3 3 (k)(k),
(9)

Fig. 2. Plotting of third order Laguerre-Volterra kernels. (Top) First order

kernels c1 , c2 and c3 . (Middle) Second order kernels c11 , c22 and c33 .
(Bottom) Third order kernels c111 , c222 and c333 . Dark green denotes
c1 , c11 and c111 , blue c2 , c22 and c222 and light green c3 , c33 and c333 .
Computational analysis is done with the support of MATLAB.

Fig. 3. Behavior of temperature versus time for both model (dots) and
reactor data (blue line) for a multilevel signal. We have used samples of 30 s.
First, second and third order Laguerre-Volterra versus data are plotted in top,
middle, bottom panels respectively. To note that the usage of second order
improves notably the adjustability to data.

where only the first order is used for this exercise, thus ci
should be extracted. Note that the kernels can be factorized
by writting (9) in a compact form as follows:

With this we can arrive to

y(1)
1 (1)(1) 2 (1)(1) 3 (1)(1)
y(2)
1 (2)(2) 2 (2)(2) 3 (2)(2)
y(3)
(3)(3) 2 (3)(3) 3 (3)(3)
= 1
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
y(k)
1 (k)(k) 2 (k)(k) 3 (k)(k)

c1
c2
c3
(10)

where k takes the values from 1 to 130 (T = 20 s) and 1 to 87

(T = 20 s). The resulting matricial equation can be written as
Yk = Ak,3 C3 ,

(11)

and it is clear that Y is proportional to a non-quadratic matrix.

Multiplying both sides by AT
3,k one gets
T
AT
3,k Yk = A3,k Ak,3 C3 .

(12)

143

1 T
C3 = (AT
A3,k Yk
3,k Ak,3 )

(13)

which is known as the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse matrix.

It is interesting to note that (13) is in agreement with the one
obtained in [9] by which the parameters are computed through
the optimal solution by minimizing the cost function. It should
be clarified that the coefficients (cj ,cjj ) of the second order
model as well as those (ci ,cii y ciii ) of third order model were
obtained with a similar criterion to that used for extracting the
ones of the first order. All calculations to extract the ci , cii and
ciii were performed with the support of MATLAB [10]. In fig.
2 the evolution of ci , cii and ciii with respect to samples is
displayed. It is interesting to note that all panels are featured
by a stability that is reached after 47 samples in average, where
the convergence takes place.
III. R ESULTS AND I NTERPRETATION
We have collected data in samples of 20 s and 30 s from
20o C up to 80o C during 2500 s, approximately. The input in

the analysis is defined as the initial manifestation inside the

production chain in plant. Thus a hardware was implemented
and it provides a 4-level pseudorandom signal in order to drive
a I/P transducer (4,20 mA) which controls a 3 way pneumatic
valve. It serves to regulate the flow of diathermic oil necessary
to heat the reactor. The main results are plotted in fig. 3. There
the behavior of Laguerre-Volterra model up to third order
together to reactor data tell us the excellent adjustability of
model with a minor discrepancy above 2000 s.
In top panel the first order model presents minor fluctuations
when is superposed to data as indicated at the range between
1000 and 2000 s. It should be noted the existence of a
discrepancy during the first 500 s. The second order model
and data are plotted in the middle. There a quite acceptable
agreement is observed. However a rough separation of model
to data appears after 2000 s.
The third order model at the bottom of fig. 3 is displayed.
Although there is a clear disagreement ranging between 1800
and 2500 s, the model is still realiable during the first 1000
s. On the other hand, one can see data is clearly featured
by 4 phases: the first one between 0 and 300 s, appears as
consequence of an early stage of condensation intrinsically
ascribed to melamine resin reactor. In a second stage ranging
between 300 and 1700 s, data exhibit solely heating. A third
one between 1700 and 2200 s, reveals exothermic reactions.
Finally, the last stage reaching 840 C beyond 2500 s, the heat
provided to reactor is turned off. Although exist there a small
discrepancy in a 5% it is observed that the model in up to third
order have demonstrated an excellent compatibility to data. In
fig. 4 all coefficients for both 20 s and 30 s, are listed. A small
difference for those values computed with different poles is
viewed, but a noteworthy fact is that of the convergence despite
of the fact that only diagonal terms from the multidimensional
Laguerre-Volterra matrix are used.
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have concentrated on the effect in to
incorporate only diagonal terms from a generalized LaguerreVolterra model into a reduced scheme of up to third order
capable to model the temperature of a bath reactor which is
featured by several phases.
The model exhibits a notable adjustability to data in its third
order of approximation, whereas in a second order a similar
compatibility is found. The case when diagonal components
are kept in analysis might represent an interesting option in
order to avoid time consuming in those cases where a huge
amount of kernels should be computed.
Although one can observe a small discrepancy of up to 5 %
interesting prospects of the model to automate a batch reactor
is clearly evident. In a future work, Chebyshev polynomials
or similar, will be used in order to find advantages and
disadvantages against our proposed model.

144

Fig. 4. Values of kernels up to third order obtained for the Laguerre-Volterra

model used in this work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank to PISOPAK PERU S.A.C
where the experimental tests were performed. H.N-Ch is
very grateful to the nice atmosphere found in the FIEE-UNI
during the academic year 2008, and therefore thanks to F.
Merchan, D. Carbonel, J. Betetta and A. Rocha, as well as to
postgraduate section staff Mrs. D. Rojas and Mrs. M. Alvarez.
Finally, the authors would like to thank to Mrs. K. Mesa
whom have help us with the technical details concerning this
manuscript in an early version.
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