Adaptive control of ultrafiltration

An adaptive controller has been developed and implemented for the control of ultrafiltration in dialysis treatments of patients with renal problems. The reason for using adaptive control is the large difference in process dynamics when different dialysis filters are used. For several reasons, an adaptive pole-placement controller with least-squares identification was chosen. Due to the nature of the process, special attention was paid to the problem of having a smooth startup. This and other design considerations are discussed in a special section following the description of the process and the control design. A few registrations of signals from the real process are also shown.