  Bioprocesses have received a lot of attention to produce clean and
sustainable alternatives to fossil-based materials. However, they are generally
difficult to optimize due to their unsteady-state operation modes and
stochastic behaviours. Furthermore, biological systems are highly complex,
therefore plant-model mismatch is often present. To address the aforementioned
challenges we propose a Reinforcement learning based optimization strategy for
batch processes.
  In this work, we applied the Policy Gradient method from batch-to-batch to
update a control policy parametrized by a recurrent neural network. We assume
that a preliminary process model is available, which is exploited to obtain a
preliminary optimal control policy. Subsequently, this policy is updatedbased
on measurements from thetrueplant. The capabilities of our proposed approach
were tested on three case studies (one of which is nonsmooth) using a more
complex process model for thetruesystemembedded with adequate process
disturbance. Lastly, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of this
strategy compared against current existing approaches such as nonlinear model
predictive control.
