Development of Mathematical Models for Industrial Processes Using Dynamic Neural Networks

Dynamic neural networks (DNNs) are a type of artificial neural network (ANN) designed to work with sequential data where context in time is important. Unlike traditional static neural networks that process data in a fixed order, dynamic neural networks use information about past inputs, which is important if the dynamic of a certain process is emphasized. They are commonly used in natural language processing, speech recognition, and time series prediction. In industrial processes, their use is interesting for the prediction of difficult-to-measure process variables. In an industrial isomerization process, it is crucial to measure the quality attributes that affect the octane number of gasoline. Process analyzers commonly used for this purpose are expensive and subject to failure. Therefore, to achieve continuous production in the event of a malfunction, mathematical models for estimating product quality attributes are imposed as a solution. In this paper, mathematical models were developed using dynamic recurrent neural networks (RNNs), i.e., their subtype of a long short-term memory (LSTM) architecture. The results of the developed models were compared with the results of several types of other data-driven models developed for an isomerization process, such as multilayer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural networks, support vector machines (SVM), and dynamic polynomial models. The obtained results are satisfactory, suggesting a good possibility of application.