ABSTRACT
Monitoring and control of batch processes are crucial tasks in a wide variety of industrial processes such as pharmaceutical processes, specialty chemicals production, polymer production and fermentation processes. Batch processes are characterized by prescribed processing of raw materials for a finite duration to convert them to products. A high degree of reproducibility is necessary to obtain successful batches. With the advent of process computers and recent developments in on-line sensors, more data have become available for evaluation. Usually, a history of the past successful and some unsuccessful batches exist. Data from successful batches characterize the normal process operation and can be used to develop empirical process models and process monitoring systems.
