Just-In-Time Learning Based Functional Spectral Data Modeling for In-Situ Measurement of Slurry Component Concentrations via Infrared Spectroscopy

For using infrared spectroscopy to conduct in-situ measurement of slurry component concentrations during batch crystallization or fermentation process in engineering practice, a novel just-in-time learning (JITL) based functional modeling method is proposed for spectral data analysis in this article to improve on-line measurement accuracy, by addressing engineering issues of very limited assay samples, spectral absorption nonlinearity, and high-dimensional spectral variables. The traditional univariate or multivariate partial least-squares (PLS) model is subtly extended to the corresponding functional form for describing the relationship between the measured spectra and slurry component concentrations, such that the salient problem of only a small number of slurry component concentration samples available in practice for spectral data modeling could be effectively solved. The wavelet functions are adopted to properly approximate the measured spectral curves owing to their multi-scale and orthogonal properties. Accordingly, a functional spectral data model is established by wavelet functional PLS for on-line measurement of single and multiple component concentrations, respectively. Meanwhile, a JITL strategy is introduced to select the most representative samples for such modeling, which could efficiently handle the disparity issue involved with real-time samples and guarantee the model’s validity. Experimental results show that root mean square error of model prediction on the solution concentration during the L-glutamic acid cooling crystallization process and multiple components of the ethanol fermentation process, could be evidently reduced over 40% and 50%, respectively, compared with the traditional PLS and support vector regression (SVR) methods.