Chemical Engineering & Technology, Vol.41, No.7, 1406-1416, 2018
Application of Model Predictive Control to a Continuous Multiple-Effect Crystallizer
An infinite horizon model predictive controller (IHMPC) with zone control is applied to a continuous five-effect evaporative sodium chloride crystallizer. Firstly, a phenomenological dynamic model of the process is developed considering mass, energy, and moment balances coupled to crystallization kinetics. The developed model plays the role of the real system in order to study the proposed optimization/control strategy. The proposed approach is compared to a classical proportional integral derivative (PID) control system. The control strategy based on the prediction of the future state of the plant provides a faster response, a better stability to the process, and a reduction in energy consumption.
Keywords:Crystallization;Energy consumption reduction;Model predictive control;Real-time optimization