Hierarchically coordinated economic MPC plantwide control of mixed continuous‐batch units in process industries with application to a beet sugar plant

Abstract

Summary This paper deals with the optimal operation of processes that combine batch and continuous units. The proposed approach is based on a hierarchical architecture with two layers. The lower layer manages the optimal operation of the batch units in a noncentralized fashion, whereas the upper layer is concerned with the scheduling of the batch units and with their smooth integration with the continuous ones. The strategy has been applied to a challenging problem found at the interface of the fed‐batch crystallizers with the upstream evaporation section in beet sugar factories. The presented approach aims at designing a system that can effectively perform the plantwide economic optimization, specifically addressing the issue of energy efficiency, while complying with all process and operational constraints.

A process-model-free method for model predictive control via a reference model-based proportional-integral-derivative controller with application to a thermal power plant

“…However, these original MPCs has large amount of computation, which brings challenges to the industrial control systems. To reduce the computation of the predictive control, some advanced MPCs, such as generalized predictive control (GPC) (Clarke et al, 1987a(Clarke et al, , 1987bForouz et al, 2021), nonlinear MPC (NMPC) (Ellis et al, 2014;Mazaeda et al, 2019) and economic MPC (EMPC) (Zhang Q. et al, 2018;Bürger et al, 2021), were developed to handle with the non-linearity in practical processes and obtain optimal performance in industrial process control. As is known to all, MPC can achieve satisfactory tracking performance because it utilizes the accurate process model to predict the future response of a plant (Qin and Badgwell, 2003), which means that its control performance is tied to the accuracy of the established process model (Ji et al, 2013).…”

Editorial Model Predictive Control for Energy Systems: Economic and Distributed Approaches

“…Finally, the third group of articles discusses application‐oriented settings, which share the common attribute of sector coupling, that is, they include elements of coupling different energy forms and the corresponding sectors …”