Williams-Otto Plant Control Based on Production Planning Associated to Coordinated Decentralized Optimization and Plantwide Control Techniques

Abstract

Manufacturing plants are increasingly complex and integrated, requiring control systems able to identify the interactions between the various operating units. Production planning and control design of a process are tools that, if combined, bring many economic benefits to the processes since they aim to identify and maintain optimal decision operations to a system. This work uses such integration between production planning and plantwide control to propose a control system for the Williams-Otto plant from the definition of the operating optimal point for coordinated decentralized optimization, in which the original optimization problem decomposition into smaller coordinated problems ensure that the found local optimum also meets the requirements of the global system. The results for decentralized optimization are satisfactory and very similar to the global optimum problem and to the control system response proposed based on the optimal obtained. It is effective taking smooth actions, working with (economic) optimal set points (economically) of operation. The unification of production planning techniques and plantwide control techniques is an effective tool for the control system design for entire plants.

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“…2, namely the Williams-Otto process. The Williams-Otto process is an exemplary chemical process which comprises several common process units from chemical engineering and is, therefore, extensively studied in the literature [21][22][23][24][25]. It consists of four subsystems: a continuously stirred tank reactor, a decanter (centrifuge), a distillation column (separator) and a splitter (see Fig.…”

“…It is through these reaction rates that the reactor temperature T -which is one of the controls -influences the process. In the entire paper, we adopt the common unit conventions from the Williams-Otto literature [21,24,25], that is, masses are measured in klb, time is measured in h, mass flows are measured in klb h -1 , and temperatures are measured in°R (degrees Réaumur).…”

“…of the Williams-Otto process. Similar control channels are proposed in [24]. It is relatively easy to implement the proportional-integral controllers corresponding to the control channels (30)…”