Self-organizing Agent-based Grade Transition in Distributed Chemical Reactor Networks

Agent-based control structures provide flexible and emergent solutions to complex nonlinear problems benefiting from properties such as modularity, adaptability, scalability and robustness. One such problem is product grade transitions in distributed process. The framework proposed earlier (Tetiker, 2006a) is extended by adding several layers of agents to control species percentage distribution in autocatalytic reactor networks. A deadlock detection layer is implemented to detect and solve conflicting cases between local controller agents. An auctioning mechanism is employed to promote competition between local controller agents leading to emergent solutions satisfying global constraints. The proposed architecture performed successfully to change the species percentage distributions without specifying the final configuration.Copyright c © 2007 IFAC