Hybrid heuristic algorithm based controller tuning for a bioreactor

Bioreactor is one of the prime processing units widely employed to produce important chemical and biochemical compounds. In this paper, a hybrid heuristic algorithm has been attempted to tune PID controller for nonlinear Bioreactor model. The hybrid algorithm is a combination of Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. Multiobjective performance indexes such as Integral Square Error, peak overshoot are considered to guide this algorithm for discovering best possible value of controller parameters. The controller tuning procedure is individually discussed for both stable and unstable steady state operating region of simulated bio-reactor model. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme has been validated through a comparative study with BFO, PSO based controller tuning methods proposed in the literature. The results show that, the hybrid method provides improved performance in reference tracking and load disturbance rejection with minimal ISE value.