Pressure filtration, or cake filtration, is commonly used in chemical and biochemical industries as well as in the mining industry. Automatic control of multiple parallel filters simultaneously in order to increase total throughput is known to be challenging. Typically, a process unit has some processing steps upstream the parallel pressure filtration system (PPFS) including some buffer tank volume, which can be utilized for optimized throughput control.

It is a common practice to try to keep a constant volumetric flow rate through the individual filters during their running cycle for all filters in a PPFS, [1], which makes it optimal to maximize the run cycle until the differential pressure (DP) over the filter reaches a suitable value, approaching maximum allowed DP. However, in practice, the individual filters often show a non-constant flow rate behavior, typically a decreasing function of ...