Food Control 12 (2001) 175±180

www.elsevier.com/locate/foodcont

Identi®cation of fuzzy controller for use with a falling-®lm evaporator

S.T. Lahtinen *
Department of Agricultural Engineering and Household Technology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27 (Viikki B), FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland
Received 5 July 2000; received in revised form 21 December 2000; accepted 21 December 2000

Abstract
A ®rst-order Takagi±Sugeno fuzzy inference engine based on the use of polynomial consequents in the fuzzy rules was applied to
the identi®cation of a thermocompression evaporator. The fuzzy system obtained proved to be suitable for the description and o€-
line optimization of the process based on the recirculation of sugar liquid in the equipment. Only two linguistic rules were needed to
successfully describe the complicated and non-linear e€ects of four input variables on the outlet concentration of sugar. Supervisory
control of evaporation could be realized by steering only the feed of liquid to the evaporator, or the recirculation of liquid in the
evaporation section. Ó 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Fuzzy system; Evaporation; Automatic control

1. Introduction a control system seem to be tutorial examples presented

Fuzzy set theory provides an e€ective tool for incor-
porating cognitive thinking into inference engine soft-
ware which connects the values of input and output
variables by linguistic rules. In addition to ambiguous
and vague data, fuzzy inference engines can be applied
to crisp input and output variables, allowing robust or
adaptive systems or as a method of non-parametric
modeling. The fuzzy approach has been applied to
various ordinary food processing applications, such as
the automatic control of aseptic processing (Shieh,
Chen, & Ferng, 1992; Singh & Ou-Yang, 1994), batch or
extrusion cooking (Linko, Uemura, Zhu, & Eerikainen,
1992; Davidson & Smith, 1995), drying (Zhang &
Litch®eld, 1993; R uger, Langhans, & Alender, 1995),
frying of snack food (Choi, Whittaker, & Bullock,
1996), baking (Perrot, Trystram, Guennec, & Guely,
1996; Kim & Cho, 1997), roasting of peanuts (Davidson,
Brown, & Landman, 1999) as well as evaporation.
Mittal (1997) and Linko and Linko (1998) have recently
discussed the properties of fuzzy inference engines in the
automatic control of food processes in general.
Although the application of industrial evaporators is
widespread, the literature on the fuzzy control of evap-
oration is limited. The ®rst detailed descriptions of such
*
Tel.: +358-708-58506; fax: +358-708-58491.
E-mail address: seppo.lahtinen@helsinki.® (S.T. Lahtinen).
by Newell and Lee (1989) in their textbook of process
control. In most studies, the fuzzy controls of di€erent
evaporators have been compared with other control
types using simulation (Lee & Lee, 1993; Vega, Cipri-
ano, de Prada, Tancara, & Guarini, 1994; Zdravkovic,
Turajlic, & Marsenic, 1994). One food application is
presented by Schmidt, Pandit, and Christmann (1994),
who described the design of a fuzzy control system for
the manufacture of fruit juice concentrates. Later,
Dohnal and Walthew (1995) presented an example of a
fuzzy control system for preventing evaporator fouling
in the sugar industry.
The behavior of evaporators has been empirically
described using stochastic identi®cation (Radek &
Valter, 1979), step or pulse testing methods (Lozano,
Elustondo, & Romagnoli, 1984), residence time distri-
bution (Wittwer, 1983; Janssen, 1994), empirical state
space modeling (Quaak, van Wijck, & van Haren, 1994;
van Wijck, Quaak, & van Haren, 1994) and response
surface methodology (Lahtinen, 1998). In this study a
Takagi±Sugeno fuzzy infrence engine was identi®ed for
the supervisory control of a falling-®lm evaporator. This
inference engine type has found favor with automatic
control because of its computational eciency and us-
ability with linear techniques like PID control. Choi
et al. (1996) applied the Takagi±Sugeno approach to
design a pure neuro-fuzzy controller for time lag com-
pensation in a process containing two controlled vari-
ables. Recently, Perrot, Me, Trystram, Trichard, and

0956-7135/01/$ - see front matter Ó 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 5 6 - 7 1 3 5 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 4 - 4
176 S.T. Lahtinen / Food Control 12 (2001) 175±180
Decloux (1998) have used human expertise to set up a
Takagi±Sugeno fuzzy controller for a micro®ltration
process for sugar.
2. Equipment
A pilot-scale single-e€ect MKT PE-1-2 falling-®lm
evaporator was used in the experiments (MKT Facto-
ries, Finland). The detailed structure and operation of
the equipment have been previously described (Lahti-
nen, 1998). In the present study, main part of the con-
centrate ¯ow was combined with the feed ¯ow
immediately after evaporation without cooling and re-
circulating it via the stirred tank (Fig. 1). In this way
mass ¯ow in the evaporation section could be increased,
and the suciency of liquid in it was con®rmed. Mass
Fig. 1. Flow diagram of the MKT PE-1-2 evaporator.
Fig. 2. Principle of the fuzzy inference engine applied. The crisp values of the input variables X 1 and X 2 are mapped to ®ring strengths speci®ed by
the membership functions. The response of the engine is the weighted mean value of the output of each polynomial.
¯ow and liquid density in this internal recirculation cycle
were measured with an additional Danfoss Mass¯o
Mass 1100/1000 transducer. The recirculation ¯ow was
controlled manually by a three-way valve.
3. Fuzzy inference engine
A ®rst-order Tagaki±Sugeno fuzzy inference engine
was computed from the data. Contrary to the classical
Mamdani engine type, in which both the input and re-
sponse variables are ambiguous, the consequent part of
this engine type is a polynomial (Takagi & Sugeno,
1985). The principle of the fuzzy reasoning mechanism
used was consistent with Fig. 2. The weight of the ith
linguistic fuzzy rule wi was the product of the ®ring
strengths wij of the antecedent's constituents, j indicat-
ing the input variable. The response y of the engine was
the weighted mean value of the output yi of each poly-
nomial.
4. Methods
Feed mass ¯ow (FMF), mass ¯ow in the internal re-
circulation cycle (RMF) and motive steam pressure
(MSP) were preset to the desired values and sucrose
solutions of the known concentrations (FC) were fed to
the evaporator. The concentrations of sucrose in the
outlet (OC) were measured manually with a refract-
ometer after the process had equilibrated. The ranges of
the input variables were [340,600] kg/h, [291,1065] kg/h,
[1.4, 3.4] bar and [9.85, 35.75]% for FMF, RMF, MSP
and FC, respectively.
 S.T. Lahtinen / Food Control 12 (2001) 175±180 177

27 of the data points were collected in a randomized steam pressure was 0.05 bar and that of concentrations
order during three successive days according to a Box± 0.05%, expressed as a percentage of sucrose.
Behnken experimental design blocked orthogonally.
These data were supplemented by previous and addi-
tional experiments made at intermediate values of the
input variables. All the data consisting of 62 observa- 5. Results
tions were used for the identi®cation of the fuzzy in-
ference engine. The validity of the engine found was The maximum absolute value of the correlation co-
checked by cross-validation using the jack-knife tech- ecient between the paired input vectors was 0.226. The
nique. The prediction sum of squares PRESS was used low correlation coecients indicated that the input
as the validity criterion. The datum points were divided variables were suciently independent of one another
into seven subsets in the PRESS computation. and no signi®cant confounding existed between their
The conventional functions of the Matlab 5.3.1 values. The variation in outlet concentration OC was
software and its Fuzzy Logic Toolbox 2.0.1 were used furthermore large enough to contain adequately infor-
in the computations (The Mathworks, Natick, USA). mation for the identi®cation. The mean of the OC dis-
2
The Gaussian equation f …x; r; c† ˆ exp‰ …x c† =2r2 Š, tribution was 32.9% while its skewness was )0.343 and
where the parameter c indicates the location on the x- range was 41.5%. The values of OC were approximately
axis of the maximum point of the curve and r2 indi- normally distributed.
cates the curve's width, was used as the membership The fuzzy inference engine could be made to perfectly
function to obtain smooth response surfaces. The val- ®t the data by choosing a large number of fuzzy rules in
ues of c and r2 as well as the coecients of the poly- the system. The ®t could also be enhanced by increasing
nomials were optimized using the ANFIS neuro-fuzzy the number of iteration epochs in the optimization of
algorithm (Jang, 1993). The identi®cation as a whole parameters for the inference engine. Thus, there was a
was based on the minimization of the root-mean- danger of over®tting the system to the data, which ap-
square-error RMSE between the measured and the peared as incredible response surfaces and a lessened
predicted data. ability of the engine to generalize. These outcomes were
Coded values of the input variables between )1 and 1 avoided by using as high a cluster radius as possible in
were used in the identi®cation. The gen®s2 function used the identi®cation, while still aiming at a good ®t to the
coded the measured OC values to the range [)5,5] and data. A good ®t obtained with a small number of fuzzy
clusterized them to ®nd natural groupings from the data rules seemed to be a viable estimate of the system's re-
set (Chiu, 1994). The number of linguistic rules in the liability.
engine was determined by varying the relative cluster The fuzzy subsets in the antecedents of the linguistic
radius for the input variables. For simplicity, an equal rules are given in Table 1. With four input variables,
cluster radius between 0 and 1 was used for each of the there were four membership functions for both of the
inputs (Gulley & Jang, 1995). The cluster radius indi- two rules obtained. Because of the clusterization of
cates the extent of the cluster in the data space consid- the data and the weighting of the two responses of the
ered as a unit hypercube. A small cluster radius usually polynomials, the importance of the variables in the
leads to the ®nding of many clusters in the data set. This whole data space could not be obtained from their co-
in turn results in a large number of rules in the engine. ecients (Table 2). A relative cluster radius of 0.94 was
The recirculation of concentrate was already known adequate to produce a successful ®t to the data. The
to make the process time-dependent and non-linear. Table 1
Furthermore, experimentation at di€erent times and Membership functions for the input variablesa
conditions made the data set used incoherent and low-
ered its quality for identi®cation purposes. The mass Variable Fuzzy linguistic c r2
value
¯ow signals (FMF, RMF) and the concentration signals
(obtained by computation from densities) were more- Feed mass ¯ow PS 0.1419 0.6807
over subject to considerable temporal variation due to PVS 0.1087 0.6786
interferences caused by vibration and electrical motors. Recirculation mass PVS 0.09756 0.4087
These characteristics recommended the use of the fuzzy ¯ow NVL )1.290 0.3885
Motive steam PVS 0.1022 0.3735
inference engine as a controller in this system. The pressure PSM 0.3681 0.7680
standard deviations of the sampled signals of densities Feed concentration ZR 0.05149 0.3047
and mass ¯ow were at most 1.8% of the measurement PM 0.4428 0.8254
range after averaging 10 successive samples. The corre- a
The parameters c and r2 are given in coded units corresponding to
sponding estimate for the signal of motive steam tem- the range [)1, 1] of the inputs. PM, positive medium; PSM, positive
perature was 0.9°C in the range 0±150°C. In the small medium; PS, positive small; PVS, positive very small; ZR, zero;
identi®cation, the accuracy of the reading of motive NVL, negative very large.
178 S.T. Lahtinen / Food Control 12 (2001) 175±180

Table 2
Rules of the fuzzy inference enginea

1. IF FMF is ``PS'' and RMF is ``PVS'' and MSP is ``PVS'' and

FC is ``ZR'' THEN
oc ˆ 2:264  fmf ‡ 5:438  rmf ‡ 18:48  msp ‡ 35:50  fc
5:540
2. IF FMF is ``PVS'' and RMF is ``NVL'' and MSP is ``PSM''
and FC is ``PM'' THEN
oc ˆ 22:78  fmf 0:4368  rmf ‡ 14:43  msp ‡ 13:22  fc‡
6:444
a
FMF, RMF, MSP and FC represent the fuzzy variables and fmf,
rmf, msp and fc their coded crisp (i.e., numerical) values. oc is the
value of outlet concentration.

correlation coecient between the measured and pre-

Fig. 4. Histogram of one thousand PRESS values obtained using the
dicted OC values was 0.990 and RMSE was 1.5%. No jack-knife technique.
trend was observed in the residuals between the mea-
sured and predicted outlet concentrations, as should be
the case (Fig. 3).
The total corrected sum of squares for the response
was 7514.7%2 . The mean of one thousand PRESS values
computed using randomized observations was 331.8%2 ,
indicating a good predictive ability of the system. The
distribution of the PRESS values was well centered
round the mean, considering that 15% of the data
points were left out in the identi®cation of the subset
fuzzy engines (Fig. 4).
Due to considerable non-linearity, simple e€ects of
the input variables on outlet concentration were not
found. The e€ect of recirculation mass ¯ow on outlet
concentration was highly non-linear and particularly
dependent on feed mass ¯ow (Fig. 5). The interactions
and/or non-linear e€ects between or of the other input
variables were also previously observed (Lahtinen,
1998).

Fig. 5. Example of the response surfaces for the di€erence between feed
and outlet concentrations. Motive steam pressure is 2.4 bar and feed
concentration of sucrose is 22.8%.

O€-line optimization of the process using sequential

Fig. 3. Residuals between the measured and predicted outlet concen-
trations.
quadratic programming (Gill, Murray, & Wright, 1981)
showed that the employment of an internal recirculation
cycle more than doubled the evaporator's performance
compared with that obtained previously (Lahtinen,
1998). Steering of the recirculation mass ¯ow combined
with the maximum motive steam pressure and the
minimum feed mass ¯ow used also favored an ecient
concentration of the liquid (Fig. 6). Using another
control strategy in which the evaporation rate ˆ
FMF  (1 ) FC/OC) kg/h was maximized by steering
feed mass ¯ow achieved a similar result without addi-
tional changes in the control equipment (Fig. 6). In this
case, the optimal supervisory control assumed that both
recirculation mass ¯ow and motive steam pressure were
kept at the maximum values allowed.
 S.T. Lahtinen / Food Control 12 (2001) 175±180
Fig. 6. Optimal control trajectories of the process. Upper row: maximum outlet concentrations and evaporation rates as a function of feed con-
centration. Lower row: steering of input variables when outlet concentration …І or evaporation rate (- - -) is maximized.
6. Discussion
The greatest hindrance to the widespread use of tra-
ditional multivariable control strategies in the process
industry is the need for a detailed mathematical model
of the control system, and the diculty to copy its re-
alization from one application to another. This makes
the introduction of such strategies quite expensive in
such ®elds as the food industry, where the degree of
working up of the products is seldom high. The fuzzy
approach used in this study made possible the setup of
the control system empirically without laborious math-
ematical analysis of the evaporator. Even compared to
the introduction of fuzzy systems based on expert
knowledge, this technique seemed to be more economi-
cal and time-saving. Furthermore, it can be easily put
into practice using cheap programmable logic control-
lers commonly used in the food industry. These char-
acteristics and the small amount of the linguistic rules
obtained draw a picture of a simple and comprehensible
method applicable to the supervisory control of evapo-
rators.
Control objectives for evaporators are formulated
from product speci®cations, operational constraints and
cost considerations. In most cases, the main purpose of
the control system is to maintain product density when
changes in production rate or in feed density occur.
Automatic control of these variables is dicult, espe-
179
cially when the operation is disturbed by a great time lag
and random steam extractions. Conventionally, the
control of falling-®lm evaporators may be structured by
a combination of cascade regulators and a feedforward
control giving an anticipation of the steam extraction.
At a strategical level, steam ¯ow and feed ¯ow may be
controlled separately by an operator, or their interde-
pendent values can be set automatically, based on mass
and energy balance computations (Isdale, 1991). The
drawback of the latter strategy is that process mea-
surements seldom satisfy the material and energy bal-
ance constraints included, due to random and gross
errors in the readings of measuring devices. This com-
plicates process control especially in those cases in which
the model parameters or the state of the process change
continuously. The fuzzy identi®cation approach applied
seems to be promising in process control, because
strictly accurate measurements of the variables are not
required. The supervisory control of the evaporator can
be realized using equations in which the ambiguity of
the measured variables is inherently accounted in the
model structure.
The lag time between a disturbance and the change
observed in product quality considerably a€ect the
performance of any industrial control system. The
consequence of the lag time is that the desired and actual
outputs of the process poorly correspond to one another
except in the conditions of trouble-free operation. If the
180 S.T. Lahtinen / Food Control 12 (2001) 175±180
actual plant output can be predicted by a plant estima-
tor, the performance can be improved because the
controller can reduce the error between the reference
input and the plant output. Choi et al. (1996) could
structure a control system based on the Takagi±Sugeno
approach to successfully predict the actual plant output
a€ected by controller output after the lag time. That
with the successful identi®cation outcome reached in the
present study suggests that lag compensation could be
also improved in evaporators using a Takagi±Sugeno
fuzzy system. The results as combined point towards a
promising direction for the future research of the topic.
The identi®cation of the Takagi±Sugeno fuzzy infer-
ence engine had many similar features to those of a single
polynomial created using response surface methodology
(RSM). The apparent advantages of this fuzzy system
over the polynomial model were its ability to describe
stronger non-linearities (Fig. 5) and the possibility to
directly exploit to some extent allusive data set in the
computation. These advantages would seem to make it
more attractive than the single polynomial in many food
process applications including process control.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable
assistance of Jarmo Jyrki
ainen, Mika Linna, Olavi
Sorjonsalo, Juhani Tanayama and Tuomo Virtanen in
collecting the data.
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