Control of moving bed chromatographic processes

A new concept for the control of moving bed chromatographic processes is developed. In a first step focus is on the true moving bed process. A fairly simple method is developed for the control of this process with standard PI controllers. This method makes direct use of the underlying spatio-temporal pattern formation phenomena - also termed as nonlinear wave propagation (Marquardt [12], Kienle [4]). According to the well known `Triangle Theory' of Storti et al. [17] the chromatographic unit is working under optimal operating conditions, i.e. with minimal solvent consumption and maximal feed throughput. Finally the application of this method to the simulated moving bed process is discussed.