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Robust thermal stability for batch process intensification with model predictive control

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Kanavalau, A 
Masters, R 
Kähm, W 
Vassiliadis, VS 

Abstract

Thermal runaways in exothermic batch reactors present major safety and economic issues for industry. Control systems currently used are not capable of detecting thermal runaway behaviour and achieve nominally safe operation by carrying out the reaction at a low temperature. Recently, improvements in safety and process intensity have been achieved by using Model Predictive Control (MPC) with embedded stability criteria. The reliance of this approach on accurate model predictions makes plantmodel mismatch a crucial issue. The most common source of plant-model mismatch is uncertainty of model parameters. Scenario-based MPC and worst case MPC are used with stability criterion K and Lyapunov exponents in this work. The effect of all uncertain parameters on thermal runaway potential can be identified easily for simulations in this work. Hence, worst case MPC results in a computationally more efficient control scheme than scenario-based MPC, whilst ensuring the same extent of safety and process intensification.

Description

Keywords

Thermal stability, Robust control, Model predictive control, Process intensification

Journal Title

Computers and Chemical Engineering

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0098-1354
1873-4375

Volume Title

130

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
EPSRC (1776365)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M508007/1)