An optimal control strategy for hydrometallurgical removal process under uncertainty

Abstract Impurity removal of hydrometallurgy, focused on reducing the ionic impurities with various additives, is critical stage to determine the production quality and stability. Due to the uncertainty and disturbances in the process, these impurities could rarely be purified effectively which easily results in a poor product quality of hydrometallurgy. To improve the impurity removal production, an optimal control strategy is proposed for removal process under uncertainty. In this strategy, the distribution probability of process uncertainty and disturbances are estimated and introduced into process optimization. And then a pair of relaxing variables is defined to adjust the production constraints for obtaining a feasible optimal solution under uncertainty. The proposed strategy is performed with industrial samples from a practical removal process, and the experiment result proves its effectiveness.