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Deep MLP neural network control of bioreactor

Conference Paper · March 2019

DOI: 10.1109/IREC.2019.8754572

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The 10th International Renewable Energy Congress (IREC 2019)
Deep neural control of bioreactor
Latifa Belhaj Salah
National engineering school Sfax
Tunisia
Latifa.belhadjsalah@enis.tn
Abstract— The paper deals with control of a bioreactor using
deep learning feed-forward neural networks. In this work
different multilayer perceptron (MLP) structures have been
trained to emulate the inverse dynamics of the bioreactor and
then used as neural controllers to achieve neural control
strategies of the considered bioreactor. Simulation results show
that a feed-forward neural network with an input layer, two
hidden layers and an output layer gives improved
performances.
Keywords— Bioreactor, MLP neural network, deep learning,
neural modeling, neural control.
I. INTRODUCTION
Biological treatment of wastewater is the process that allows
the degradation of pollutants through the action of
microorganisms. It is an important process to protect the
environment.
Bioreactors give biological solutions to solve such problems.
In fact, to reduce and eliminate polluting loads, bioreactors
for wastewater treatment are part of the reintroduction and
the reuse of treated water into the environment.
A bioreactor is a system containing organic waste dissolved
in water, reduced and digested by bacteria. It is considered as
a complex system whose modeling and control are difficult
tasks.
Several intelligent techniques especially neural network
approaches have been used to solve this kind of problems.
Neural networks are a very interesting alternative to classical
modeling and control techniques thanks to their ability to
approximate non-linear relationships without prior
knowledge of the model structure [14 and15].
In [14] for controlling a bioreactor, authors propose to use the
adaptive command to adjust certain parameters to maintain
the process performance when the model parameters change.
In [7] authors propose to use the feedback linearization
method based on a non-linear autoregressive neural network
(Narma-L2) to control a bioreactor. The simulation results
prove the effectiveness of this command compared to the
inverse neural control.
In [16 and 17], to treat cheese whey wastewater, the authors
propose the use of membrane bioreactors, which are a
combination of activated sludge units and membrane
filtration for biomass retention.
In [18] authors prove the performance of a nonlinear adaptive
controller for the wastewater treatment plant.
Fathi Fourati
Preparatory Institute of Engineers of Sfax
Tunisia
Fethi.Fourati@ipeis.rnu.tn
In this paper, we train in deep learning mode a feed-forward
neural network to control a bioreactor for wastewater
treatment. The goal of this work is to improve the
performance of the considered bioprocess.
The paper is organized as follows: In section 2, we present
the considered bioreactor. In section 3, we describe the used
neural controller. In section 4, we show the bioreactor control
strategy. In section 5 we present the simulation results.
Finally, in section 6, we give a conclusion.
II. BIOREACTOR MODEL
The considered model of bioreactor is continuous one. It is
characterized by a constant volume where the biological
reaction concerns a biomass X and a substrate S. The
dynamic model is defined by the following equations [9 and
10]:
𝜇(𝑆) 𝑄
𝑆̇ = − 𝑋 + (𝑆𝑖𝑛 − 𝑆)
{ 𝑌 𝑉
𝑄
𝑋̇ = 𝜇(𝑆)𝑋 − 𝑋 .
𝑉
(1)
In all phases, the volume V is perfectly homogenous in which
a microbiological reaction occurs where biomass X grow on
a substrate S which is converted into a product P.
𝑆𝑖𝑛 is the input substrate concentration (in mg/l)
𝑆
𝜇(𝑆) = 𝜇𝑚𝑎𝑥 presents the reaction speed.
𝑆+𝐾𝑠
Y is the conversion coefficient.
𝑄 is the flow input and the flow output of the bioreactor.
𝑄
𝐷 = 𝑈 = ∈ [0, 𝐷𝑚𝑎𝑥] presents the dilution rate that we
𝑉
defined here as the control input [9 and 10].
III. NEURAL CONTROLLER
Neural networks are characterized by their ability to learn
automatically nonlinear input-output relationships from data.
They have been successfully applied to the identification,
modeling and control of dynamic systems [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and
6].
The deep multilayer feed forward neural network with an
input layer, an output layer, and n hidden layer has the ability
to take with the non-linearity of the process to control the
The 10th International Renewable Energy Congress (IREC 2019)
bioreactor. It can be used as solution to control such system Here, the input I(k) vector of the controller is :
[8, 12 and 13].
I(k)=(Y(k+1) Y(k))T=(S(k+1) S(k) X(k+1) X(k))T
A. Neural controller structure
Figure 1 present the architecture of a multilayer feed forward The output vector O(k) (control law) is:
neural network [3, 8 and 12].
O(k)=U(k)=D(k)
C. learning algorithm
The neural network is formed in order to minimize the
quadratic error criterion E(k) (2) between the input bioreactor
U(k) and the output estimated by the neural network Û(k).
1
̂(𝑘))2
𝐸(𝑘) = (𝑈(𝑘) − 𝑈 (2)
2

The neural network is governed by the following equations:

𝑛
Fig. 1. Architecture of a multilayer feed-forward neural network 𝐼𝑖1 (𝑘) = ∑𝑙=1
𝐼 𝐼
𝑤𝑙,𝑖 (𝑘 − 1)𝐼𝑙 (𝑘) (3)

The previous neural network is composed with an input layer, 𝐼𝐼11 (𝑘) = 𝑓(𝐼𝑖1 ) (4)
n hidden layer, and an output layer. The activation function
𝑛 2
of the hidden and the output units is the sigmoidal one. 𝐼𝑖𝑖2 (𝑘) = ∑𝑖=1
ℎ 𝐼
𝑤𝑖,𝑖𝑖 (𝑘 − 1)𝐼𝑖11 (𝑘) (5)
𝐼𝑙 (𝑘) presents the l th input unit of the network and 𝑂𝑚 (𝑘) is
the m th network output. 𝐼𝑖1 (𝑘) presents the input of the i th 𝐼𝑖𝑖22 (𝑘) = 𝑓(𝐼𝑖𝑖2 (𝑘)) (6)
first hidden layer unit. 𝐼𝑖11 (𝑘) is the output of the i th first
hidden layer unit. 𝐼𝑖𝑖2 (𝑘) is the input of the ii th second hidden 𝑛
𝐼𝑖..𝑖𝑖
𝑛ℎ
𝑛−1
(𝑘) = ∑𝑖..𝑖=1 𝐼 𝑛
𝑤𝑖..𝑖,𝑖..𝑖𝑖
(𝑛−1)(𝑛−1)
(𝑘 − 1)𝐼𝑖..𝑖 (𝑘) (7)
layer unit. 𝐼𝑖𝑖22 (𝑘) presents the total output of the ii th second
𝑛−1
hidden layer unit.. 𝐼𝑖..𝑖 (𝑘) presents the input of the i..i th 𝑛𝑛 𝑛
(𝑛−1)(𝑛−1)
𝐼𝑖..𝑖𝑖 (𝑘) = 𝑓(𝐼𝑖..𝑖𝑖 (𝑘)) (8)
(n-1th) hidden layer unit. 𝐼𝑖..𝑖 (𝑘) is the output of the
𝑛
i..i th (n-1th) hidden layer unit. 𝐼𝑖..𝑖𝑖 (𝑘) is the input of i..ii th 𝑠 (𝑘)
𝐼𝑚 𝑛
= ∑𝑖..𝑖𝑖=1
𝑛ℎ
𝑂
𝑤𝑖..𝑖𝑖,𝑚 𝑛𝑛
(𝑘 − 1)𝐼𝑖..𝑖𝑖 (𝑘) (9)
𝑛𝑛
(n th) hidden layer unit. 𝐼𝑖..𝑖𝑖 (𝑘) presents The output of the
𝑠 (𝑘)
i..ii th (n th) hidden layer unit. 𝐼𝑚 presents the input of 𝑠
𝑂𝑚 (𝑘) = 𝑓(𝐼𝑚 ) (10)
the m th output layer unit.
𝑂 𝐼 𝐼2 𝐼𝑛
𝑤𝑖..𝑖𝑖,𝑚 (. ), 𝑤𝑙,𝑖 (. ), 𝑤𝑖,𝑖𝑖 (. ), 𝑤𝑖..𝑖,𝑖..𝑖𝑖 (. ) are the weights of the Where 𝑛ℎ , 𝑛𝐼 , 𝑛ℎ1 , 𝑛ℎ𝑛−1 , 𝑛ℎ𝑛 present the number of units
links, respectively between, the i..ii th (n th) hidden layer and respectively in the first hidden layer, the input layer, the
the output layer, the input layer and the first hidden layer, , second hidden layer, the (n-1)th hidden layer, the nth hidden
the first hidden layer and the second hidden layer, and the (n- layer.
1) th hidden layer and the n th hidden layer.
B. Neural controller training f is a sigmoidal function :
The Training structure used is similar to an offline learning 1
to reproduce the inverse dynamics of the process. Figure 2 𝑓(𝑥) = (11)
1+𝑒 −𝑥
shows the training method of the neural controller.
The learning step consists of adjusting the connection
weights using the back propagation algorithm minimizing
criterion (2) by the gradient method.

𝑤(𝑡) = 𝑤(𝑡 − 1) + ∆𝑤 (12)

and

𝜕𝐸𝑘
∆𝑤 = −𝜀 (13)
𝜕𝑤

Where 𝜀 is the learning rate.

Fig. 2. Training structure of the controller.

The 10th International Renewable Energy Congress (IREC 2019)

IV. BIOREACTOR CONTROL STRATEGY

After the training step, the neural controller is able to give the
control action U (k) to the system. The control structure of
the bioreactor is constituted by the considered neural network
which is placed in cascade with the bioreactor.
Figure 3 presents the bioreactor neural control bloc diagram.

Fig. 5. Evolution of the control action of the bioreactor.

Here

Et = 3.0872

The evolution of the bioreactor output and the control action

Fig. 3. Bioreactor neural control bloc diagram. using a neural controller with two hidden layer are given in
Figure 6 and Figure 7 respectively.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS

We consider three neural network structures, network

constituted with one single hidden layer, network with two
hidden layers and network with three hidden layers.
In order to compare the neural control strategy using different
neural controller structures we consider the performance
error criterion (14):
1

400
Et  k 1
( S ref  S (k )) 2 (14)
400
The evolution of the bioreactor output and the control action
using a neural controller with one hidden layer are given in
Figure 4 and Figure 5 respectively.

Fig. 6. Evolution of the bioreactor substrate output.

Fig. 4. Evolution of The bioreactor substrate output.

The 10th International Renewable Energy Congress (IREC 2019)
Fig. 7. Evolution of the control action of the bioreactor
Here
Et =2.0818
The evolution of the bioreactor output and the control action
using a neural controller with three hidden layer are given in
Figure 8 and Figure 9 respectively.
Fig. 8. Evolution of the bioreactor substrate output.
Fig. 9. Evolution of the control action of the bioreactor.
Here
Et= 3.5767
From the previous results, we remark that the error criterion
is lower in the case of the neural controller constituted with
two hidden layer.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this work we have achieved a bioreactor control using a
feed-forward neural network that is a multilayer perceptron
(MLP) type, in deep learning mode. Simulation results show
that a neural network structure with two hidden layers gives
better performances for the bioreactor. In fact, the chosen
performance error criterion Et presents a smaller value and
the bioreactor output seems more stable in this case. In the
future we hope to achieve an adaptive deep neural control to
improve the bioreactor performances.
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