Experimental methods in chemical engineering: Artificial neural networks-ANNs

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are one of the most powerful and versatile tools provided by artificial intelligence and they have now been exploited by chemical engineers for several decades in countless applications. ANNs are computational tools providing a minimalistic mathematical model of neural functions. Coupled with raw data and a learning algorithm, they can be applied to tasks such as modelling, classification, and prediction. Recently, their popularity has grown remarkably and they now constitute one of the most relevant research areas within the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. ANNs are large collections of simple classifiers called neurons. Chemical engineers apply them to model complex relationships, predict reactor performance, and to automate process controllers. ANNs can leverage their ability to learn and exploit large data sets, but they can also get stuck in local minima or overfit and are difficult to reverse engineer. In 2016 and 2017, ANNs were cited in 13 245 Web of Science (WoS) articles, 538 of which were in chemical engineering; the top WoS categories were electrical & electronic engineering (1615 occurrences) artificial intelligence (1253), and energy & fuels (980). The top 4 journals mentioning ANNs were Neural Computing & Applications (117), Neurocomputing (84), Energies (76), and Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (76). In the near future, as larger data sets become available (and arduous to analyze), chemical engineers will be able to apply and leverage more sophisticated ANN architectures.