Project number:
DE-SK-DAAD Dortmund
Title of the project:
DE-SK cooperation: Reliable and Real-time Feasible Estimation and Control of Chemical Plants
Project type:
Cooperations
Project duration (start):
01.01.2018
Project duration (end):
31.12.2019
Principal investigator:
Radoslav Paulen
Investigators:
Martin Mojto, Juraj Oravec, Carlos E. Valero, Petra Valiauga

Title: Reliable and Real-time Feasible Estimation and Control of Chemical Plants

Partners:

  • Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (Radoslav Paulen, Juraj Oravec, Petra Valiauga, Carlos E. Valero, Martin Mojto)
  • Technische Universität Dortmund (Sebastian Engell, Sakthi Thangavel, Anwesh Reddy Gottu Mukkula, Afaq Ahmad)

Duration: 2018-2019

Abstract:

The goal of this project is to bring together scientists who share common research interests in the development and application of advanced estimation and control algorithms for dynamic systems in order to achieve greater energy and material efficiency as well as safety of chemical production sites. The scientific goals of the cooperation are to develop a methodology for efficient guaranteed parameter and state estimation of nonlinear dynamic systems, which shall be integrated with advanced optimizing-control schemes. Software implementations will be delivered and will be made freely available as a part of this project. Moreover, this project aims at the demonstration of the developed tools by applying them to laboratory chemical process systems, a pilot membrane filtration system, a distillation column and a chemical reactor.

The specific scientific goals of the proposed collaboration project can be summarized as a set of actions towards:
1. Development of an efficient methodology for guaranteed parameter and state estimation based on the moving-horizon principle for nonlinear dynamic systems,
2. Synthesis of real-time optimization strategies based on parameter estimation and checking for model adequacy,
3. Design of robust adaptive model predictive controllers for uncertain dynamic systems,
4. Development of a methodology for the synthesis and the application of real-time feasible optimizing controllers based on an effective combination of model predictive control and real-time optimization,
5. Prototyping software packages that enable the transfer of theoretical developments into relevant applications,
6. Demonstration of the theoretical and software developments on a set of challenging case studies which are typical for the domains of chemical engineering and process systems engineering in order to promote the project results and to stimulate acceptance by industry.


Kick-off meeting of the project

On Friday, March 9, IAM hosted the scientific seminar on "Reliable and Real-time Feasible Estimation and Control of Chemical Plants" related to our cooperation project with the research group of Professor Sebastian Engell (Technical University of Dortmund, Germany). Professor Miroslav Fikar and Professor Sebastian Engell introduced the main research activities of both research groups. Afaq Ahmad (TU Dortmund) presented the results on "Real-Time Optimization in the Presence of Uncertainty - Addressing Model Inadequacy via Effective Model Adaptation". Sakthi Thangavel (TU Dortmund) gave a talk on "Robust control in the presence of structural plant-model mismatch using model-error model in a multi-stage framework". Juraj Oravec (STU Bratislava) presented the results of the cooperation with ShanghaiTech University on "Parallel Explicit MPC for Hardware with Limited Memory". Radoslav Paulen (STU Bratislava) presented the results on "Dynamic Real-time Optimization of Batch Membrane Processes using Pontryagin's Minimum Principle". Martin Kalúz (STU Bratislava) delivered a talk on "Flexy: An Open-source Device for Control Education". Juraj Holaza (STU Bratislava) gave a talk on "Solution Techniques for Multi-Layer MPC-Based Control Strategies" Martin Klauco (STU Bratislava) presented the results on "MPC-based Reference Governor for Relay-Based Systems".


Scientific exchanges during the project

Mr. Afaq Ahmad and Mr. Sakthi Thangavel spent a week at STU in Bratislava in March 2018. They have been involved in several discussions on research topics that are pursued in the project.

Dr. Radoslav Paulen spent two weeks at TU Dortmund in June 2018. During his stay he has discussed several research topics in the area of Optimal Control, Guaranteed Estimation and Real-time Optimization and he has presented recent advances in research and pedagogy at his institute at STU in Bratislava.

Mr. Anwesh Reddy Gottu Mukkula and Mr. Sakthi Thangavel spent the period 12.9.-29.9. 2018 at STU in Bratislava. They have been involved in several discussions on research topics that are pursued in the project. They have also conducted the initial experiments on the membrane plant to implement the real-time optimization.


Dr. Juraj Oravec spent a week at TU Dortmund in October 2018. During his stay, he has discussed several research topics in the area of Robust Model Predictive Control of the energy demanding plants in the chemical industry, and he has presented recent advances in research and pedagogy at his institute at STU in Bratislava.

Mrs. Petra Artzova spent the period 14.1.-25.1.2019 at TU Dortmund. During the stay at university she discussed several topics in area of Guaranteed Parameter Estimation and its implementation on dynamic problems. She has presented recent research in Moving-Horizon Guaranteed Parameter Estimation. 

Mr. Carlos E. Valero spent 3 weeks in January 2019 at TU Dortmund. He was involved in the learning process of Tube MPC throughout different meetings with many researchers specially M.Sc. Sankaranarayanan Subramanian. He also presents his last research on Effective Recursive Set-membership State Estimation for Robust Linear MPC.


Dr. Radoslav Paulen and Mr. Martin Mojto spent almost 2 weeks (31.08.-11.09.2019) at TU Dortmund. During the stay at university, they discussed about topics in area of Advanced Process Control and Data Based Modelling. Moreover, Dr. Paulen gave a seminar on Optimal Control of Batch Membrane Processes and Mr. Mojto presented his research work in the lecture Control Structure Analysis and Design of Inferentials for an Industrial Depropanizer Column.

Publications

2024

  1. A. Ahmad – R. Paulen – R. Valo – M. Fikar – S. Engell: Iterative real-time optimization of a membrane pilot plant (in Anglo-Saxon). Control Engineering Practice, vol. 147, pp. 105907, 2024.   Zenodo

2021

  1. A. Ahmad – R. Paulen – R. Valo – M. Fikar – S. Engell: Experimental validation of iterative real-time optimization for a continuously operated membrane separation pilot plant. In ECCE 13 & ECAB 6 - 13th European Congress of Chemical Engineering & 6th European Congress of Applied Biotechnology - Book of Abstracts, DECHEMA e.V., pp. 499–500, 2021.
  2. A. R. Gottu Mukkula – M. Mateáš – M. FikarR. Paulen: Robust multi-stage model-based design of optimal experiments for nonlinear estimation. Computers & Chemical Engineering, vol. 155, pp. 107499, 2021.   arXiv

2020

  1. A. R. Gottu Mukkula – P. Valiauga – M. FikarR. Paulen – S. Engell: Experimental Real Time Optimization of a Continuous Membrane Separation Plant. Editor(s): Rolf Findeisen, Sandra Hirche, Klaus Janschek, Martin Mönnigmann, In Preprints of the 21st IFAC World Congress (Virtual), Berlin, Germany, July 12-17, 2020, vol. 21, pp. 11967–11974, 2020.     arXiv
  2. S. Thangavel – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Adaptive multi-stage NMPC using sigma point principles. In European Control Conference 2020, pp. 196–201, 2020.
  3. S. Thangavel – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Robust Multi-Stage Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Using Sigma Points. Processes, no. 7, vol. 8, pp. 0851, 2020.
  4. S. Thangavel – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Multi-stage NMPC using sigma point principles. In 6th Conference on Advances in Control and Optimization of Dynamical Systems ACODS 2020, Elsevier, vol. 53, pp. 386–391, 2020.     arXiv
  5. S. Thangavel – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Dual multi-stage NMPC using sigma point principles. Editor(s): Rolf Findeisen, Sandra Hirche, Klaus Janschek, Martin Mönnigmann, In Preprints of the 21st IFAC World Congress (Virtual), Berlin, Germany, July 12-17, 2020, vol. 21, pp. 11394–11401, 2020.     arXiv

2019

  1. S. Thangavel – S. Subramanian – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Robust Multi-Stage NMPC under Structural Plant-Model Mismatch without Full-State Measurements. In European Control Conference 2019, IEEE, pp. 781–786, 2019.

2018

  1. S. Thangavel – M. Aboelnour – S. Lucia – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Robust Dual Multi-stage NMPC using Guaranteed Parameter Estimation. In Preprints of the 6th IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, pp. 74–79, 2018.
  2. S. Thangavel – S. Lucia – R. Paulen – S. Engell: Dual robust nonlinear model predictive control: A multi-stage approach. Journal of Process Control, vol. 72, pp. 39–51, 2018.

Investigators

2018

  1. Martin Mojto
  2. Juraj Oravec
  3. Radoslav Paulen
  4. Carlos E. Valero
  5. Petra Valiauga

2019

  1. Martin Mojto
  2. Juraj Oravec
  3. Radoslav Paulen
  4. Carlos E. Valero
  5. Petra Valiauga

Responsibility for content: doc. Ing. Radoslav Paulen, PhD.
Last update: 03.01.2018 19:31
Facebook / Youtube

Facebook / Youtube

RSS