Design of Control Configurations for Complex Process Networks

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.May 2015. Major: Chemical Engineering. Advisor: Prodromos Daoutidis. 1 computer file (PDF); xi, 194 pages.Tight integration is the rule rather than the exception in chemical and energy plants. Despite the significant economic benefits which result from efficient utilization of energy/material resources, effective control of plants with such integration becomes challenging; the network-level dynamics emerging from process interconnections and the model complexity of such plants limit the effectiveness of decentralized control approaches traditionally followed in plant-wide control. The development of effective control methods for complex integrated plants is a challenging, open problem. This thesis proposes methods to develop effective control strategies for two classes of process networks. In the first part of the thesis, a class of process networks, in which slow network-level dynamics is induced by large rates of energy and/or material recycle, is considered. A graph theoretic algorithm is developed for such complex material integrated process networks to i) identify the material balance variables evolving in each time scale, and ii) design hierarchical control structures by classifying potential manipulated inputs and controlled outputs in each time scale. The application of a similar algorithm developed for energy integrated networks to representative chemical processes is also presented. The second part of the thesis focuses on generic process networks where tight integration is not necessarily reflected on a segregation of energy and/or material flows. A method is developed to systematically synthesize control configurations with favorable structural coupling, using relative degree as a measure of such coupling. Hierarchical clustering methods are employed to generate a hierarchy of control configurations ranging from fully decentralized ones to a fully centralized one. An agglomerative hierarchical clustering method is first developed, in which groups of inputs/outputs are merged successively to form fewer and larger groups that are strongly connected topologically. Then, a divisive hierarchical clustering method is developed, in which groups of inputs/outputs are decomposed recursively into smaller groups. The developed methods are applied to typical chemical process networks

plant-wide control of industrial processes using rigorous simulation and heuristics

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Book of abstracts of the 10th International Chemical and Biological Engineering Conference: CHEMPOR 2008

This book contains the extended abstracts presented at the 10th International Chemical and Biological Engineering Conference - CHEMPOR 2008, held in Braga, Portugal, over 3 days, from the 4th to the 6th of September, 2008. Previous editions took place in Lisboa (1975, 1889, 1998), Braga (1978), Póvoa de Varzim (1981), Coimbra (1985, 2005), Porto (1993), and Aveiro (2001). The conference was jointly organized by the University of Minho, “Ordem dos Engenheiros”, and the IBB - Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering with the usual support of the “Sociedade Portuguesa de Química” and, by the first time, of the “Sociedade Portuguesa de Biotecnologia”. Thirty years elapsed since CHEMPOR was held at the University of Minho, organized by T.R. Bott, D. Allen, A. Bridgwater, J.J.B. Romero, L.J.S. Soares and J.D.R.S. Pinheiro. We are fortunate to have Profs. Bott, Soares and Pinheiro in the Honor Committee of this 10th edition, under the high Patronage of his Excellency the President of the Portuguese Republic, Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva. The opening ceremony will confer Prof. Bott with a “Long Term Achievement” award acknowledging the important contribution Prof. Bott brought along more than 30 years to the development of the Chemical Engineering science, to the launch of CHEMPOR series and specially to the University of Minho. Prof. Bott’s inaugural lecture will address the importance of effective energy management in processing operations, particularly in the effectiveness of heat recovery and the associated reduction in greenhouse gas emission from combustion processes. The CHEMPOR series traditionally brings together both young and established researchers and end users to discuss recent developments in different areas of Chemical Engineering. The scope of this edition is broadening out by including the Biological Engineering research. One of the major core areas of the conference program is life quality, due to the importance that Chemical and Biological Engineering plays in this area. “Integration of Life Sciences & Engineering” and “Sustainable Process-Product Development through Green Chemistry” are two of the leading themes with papers addressing such important issues. This is complemented with additional leading themes including “Advancing the Chemical and Biological Engineering Fundamentals”, “Multi-Scale and/or Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Process-Product Innovation”, “Systematic Methods and Tools for Managing the Complexity”, and “Educating Chemical and Biological Engineers for Coming Challenges” which define the extended abstracts arrangements along this book. A total of 516 extended abstracts are included in the book, consisting of 7 invited lecturers, 15 keynote, 105 short oral presentations given in 5 parallel sessions, along with 6 slots for viewing 389 poster presentations. Full papers are jointly included in the companion Proceedings in CD-ROM. All papers have been reviewed and we are grateful to the members of scientific and organizing committees for their evaluations. It was an intensive task since 610 submitted abstracts from 45 countries were received. It has been an honor for us to contribute to setting up CHEMPOR 2008 during almost two years. We wish to thank the authors who have contributed to yield a high scientific standard to the program. We are thankful to the sponsors who have contributed decisively to this event. We also extend our gratefulness to all those who, through their dedicated efforts, have assisted us in this task. On behalf of the Scientific and Organizing Committees we wish you that together with an interesting reading, the scientific program and the social moments organized will be memorable for all.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Assessing plant design with regards to MPC performance using a novel multi-model prediction method

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is nowadays ubiquitous in the chemical industry and offers significant advantages over standard feedback controllers. Notwithstanding, projects of new plants are still being carried out without assessing how key design decisions, e.g., selection of production route, plant layout and equipment, will affect future MPC performance. The problem addressed in this Thesis is comparing the economic benefits available for different flowsheets through the use of MPC, and thus determining if certain design choices favour or hinder expected profitability. The Economic MPC Optimisation (EMOP) index is presented to measure how disturbances and restrictions affect the MPC’s ability to deliver better control and optimisation. To the author’s knowledge, the EMOP index is the first integrated design and control methodology to address the problem of zone constrained MPC with economic optimisation capabilities (today's standard in the chemical industry). This approach assumes the availability of a set of linear state-space models valid within the desired control zone, which is defined by the upper and lower bounds of each controlled and manipulated variable. Process economics provides the basis for the analysis. The index needs to be minimised in order to find the most profitable steady state within the zone constraints towards which the MPC is expected to direct the process. An analysis of the effects of disturbances on the index illustrates how they may reduce profitability by restricting the ability of an MPC to reach dynamic equilibrium near process constraints, which in turn increases product quality giveaway and costs. Hence the index monetises the required control effort. Since linear models were used to predict the dynamic behaviour of chemical processes, which often exhibit significant nonlinearity, this Thesis also includes a new multi-model prediction method. This new method, called Simultaneous Multi-Linear Prediction (SMLP), presents a more accurate output prediction than the use of single linear models, keeping at the same time much of their numerical advantages and their relative ease of obtainment. Comparing the SMLP to existing multi-model approaches, the main novelty is that it is built by defining and updating multiple states simultaneously, thus eliminating the need for partitioning the state-input space into regions and associating with each region a different state update equation. Each state’s contribution to the overall output is obtained according to the relative distance between their identification point, i.e., the set of operating conditions at which an approximation of the nonlinear model is obtained, and the current operating point, in addition to a set of parameters obtained through regression analysis. Additionally, the SMLP is built upon data obtained from step response models that can be obtained by commercial, black-box dynamic simulators. These state-of-the-art simulators are the industry’s standard for designing large-scale plants, the focus of this Thesis. Building an SMLP system yields an approximation of the nonlinear model, whose full set of equations is not of the user’s knowledge. The resulting system can be used for predictive control schemes or integrated process design and control. Applying the SMLP to optimisation problems with linear restrictions results in convex problems that are easy to solve. The issue of model uncertainty was also addressed for the EMOP index and SMLP systems. Due to the impact of uncertainty, the index may be defined as a numeric interval instead of a single number, within which the true value lies. A case of study consisting of four alternative designs for a realistically sized crude oil atmospheric distillation plant is provided in order to demonstrate the joint use and applicability of both the EMOP index and the SMLP. In addition, a comparison between the EMOP index and a competing methodology is presented that is based on a case study consisting of the activated sludge process of a wastewater treatment plant

Proceedings of the 10th International Chemical and Biological Engineering Conference - CHEMPOR 2008

This volume contains full papers presented at the 10th International Chemical and Biological Engineering Conference - CHEMPOR 2008, held in Braga, Portugal, between September 4th and 6th, 2008.FC

Identifying and Detecting Attacks in Industrial Control Systems

The integrity of industrial control systems (ICS) found in utilities, oil and natural gas pipelines, manufacturing plants and transportation is critical to national wellbeing and security. Such systems depend on hundreds of field devices to manage and monitor a physical process. Previously, these devices were specific to ICS but they are now being replaced by general purpose computing technologies and, increasingly, these are being augmented with Internet of Things (IoT) nodes. Whilst there are benefits to this approach in terms of cost and flexibility, it has attracted a wider community of adversaries. These include those with significant domain knowledge, such as those responsible for attacks on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities, a Steel Mill in Germany, and Ukraine’s power grid; however, non specialist attackers are becoming increasingly interested in the physical damage it is possible to cause. At the same time, the approach increases the number and range of vulnerabilities to which ICS are subject; regrettably, conventional techniques for analysing such a large attack space are inadequate, a cause of major national concern. In this thesis we introduce a generalisable approach based on evolutionary multiobjective algorithms to assist in identifying vulnerabilities in complex heterogeneous ICS systems. This is both challenging and an area that is currently lacking research. Our approach has been to review the security of currently deployed ICS systems, and then to make use of an internationally recognised ICS simulation testbed for experiments, assuming that the attacking community largely lack specific ICS knowledge. Using the simulator, we identified vulnerabilities in individual components and then made use of these to generate attacks. A defence against these attacks in the form of novel intrusion detection systems were developed, based on a range of machine learning models. Finally, this was further subject to attacks created using the evolutionary multiobjective algorithms, demonstrating, for the first time, the feasibility of creating sophisticated attacks against a well-protected adversary using automated mechanisms

Social, Economic and Environmental Metrics for the Sustainable Optimization of Chemical and Petroleum Processes

This research is focused on adopting a systematic methodology for address sustainability concerns during early stages of engineering design. Traditionally, engineers designed processes to achieve beneficial operations and economic goals. However, given the need to balance the economic benefits of chemical engineering processes, safety, health and environmental impacts, the improved focus on sustainability of production processes has introduced more complex dimensions to consider. When it comes to addressing the three conflicting dimensions of sustainability, there is no well-defined methodology or tool for achieving this. A thorough review was completed to investigate the applications and limitations of existing economic, environmental, health and safety evaluation tools. Therefore, the methodology combines already established approaches, concepts and tools into a novel systematic technique that addresses sustainability concerns during early stages of chemical process design. A methodology that involves the use of the SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR and ASPEN PLUS was developed for evaluating processes for sustainability. The SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR is a novel impact assessment tool developed for this research. This tool applies selected metrics that address economic, environmental as well as health and safety concerns. The SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR is a Microsoft Excel based tool that uses mass and energy balance inputs from ASPEN PLUS to evaluate the sustainability of a process. This impact assessment tool equips the process designer with a framework to design industrial processes for sustainability. The objective is for processes designers to use the results generated from the tool to assess and improve the sustainability of a process. The proposed framework involved the use of ASPEN PLUS to simulate processes, calculate mass and energy balances, complete sensitivity analysis and lastly optimize processes An overall sustainability impact which has been incorporated into the SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR was developed to quantify sustainability issues in process design. The methodology was demonstrated on two case studies: the acrylonitrile process and the allyl chloride process. The application of the methodology on the two case studies resulted in a more economic, environmental and socially acceptable processes.School of Chemical Engineerin

모델기반강화학습을이용한공정제어및최적화

학위논문(박사)--서울대학교 대학원 :공과대학 화학생물공학부,2020. 2. 이종민.순차적 의사결정 문제는 공정 최적화의 핵심 분야 중 하나이다. 이 문제의 수치적 해법 중 가장 많이 사용되는 것은 순방향으로 작동하는 직접법 (direct optimization) 방법이지만, 몇가지 한계점을 지니고 있다. 최적해는 open-loop의 형태를 지니고 있으며, 불확정성이 존재할때 방법론의 수치적 복잡도가 증가한다는 것이다. 동적 계획법 (dynamic programming) 은 이러한 한계점을 근원적으로 해결할 수 있지만, 그동안 공정 최적화에 적극적으로 고려되지 않았던 이유는 동적 계획법의 결과로 얻어진 편미분 방정식 문제가 유한차원 벡터공간이 아닌 무한차원의 함수공간에서 다루어지기 때문이다. 소위 차원의 저주라고 불리는 이 문제를 해결하기 위한 한가지 방법으로서, 샘플을 이용한 근사적 해법에 초점을 둔 강화학습 방법론이 연구되어 왔다. 본 학위논문에서는 강화학습 방법론 중, 공정 최적화에 적합한 모델 기반 강화학습에 대해 연구하고, 이를 공정 최적화의 대표적인 세가지 순차적 의사결정 문제인 스케줄링, 상위단계 최적화, 하위단계 제어에 적용하는 것을 목표로 한다. 이 문제들은 각각 부분관측 마르코프 결정 과정 (partially observable Markov decision process), 제어-아핀 상태공간 모델 (control-affine state space model), 일반적 상태공간 모델 (general state space model)로 모델링된다. 또한 각 수치적 모델들을 해결하기 위해 point based value iteration (PBVI), globalized dual heuristic programming (GDHP), and differential dynamic programming (DDP)로 불리는 방법들을 도입하였다. 이 세가지 문제와 방법론에서 제시된 특징들을 다음과 같이 요약할 수 있다: 첫번째로, 스케줄링 문제에서 closed-loop 피드백 형태의 해를 제시할 수 있었다. 이는 기존 직접법에서 얻을 수 없었던 형태로서, 강화학습의 강점을 부각할 수 있는 측면이라 생각할 수 있다. 두번째로 고려한 하위단계 제어 문제에서, 동적 계획법의 무한차원 함수공간 최적화 문제를 함수 근사 방법을 통해 유한차원 벡터공간 최적화 문제로 완화할 수 있는 방법을 도입하였다. 특히, 심층 신경망을 이용하여 함수 근사를 하였고, 이때 발생하는 여러가지 장점과 수렴 해석 결과를 본 학위논문에 실었다. 마지막 문제는 상위 단계 동적 최적화 문제이다. 동적 최적화 문제에서 발생하는 제약 조건하에서 강화학습을 수행하기 위해, 원-쌍대 미분동적 계획법 (primal-dual DDP) 방법론을 새로 제안하였다. 앞서 설명한 세가지 문제에 적용된 방법론을 검증하고, 동적 계획법이 직접법에 비견될 수 있는 방법론이라는 주장을 실증하기 위해 여러가지 공정 예제를 실었다.Sequential decision making problem is a crucial technology for plant-wide process optimization. While the dominant numerical method is the forward-in-time direct optimization, it is limited to the open-loop solution and has difficulty in considering the uncertainty. Dynamic programming method complements the limitations, nonetheless associated functional optimization suffers from the curse-of-dimensionality. The sample-based approach for approximating the dynamic programming, referred to as reinforcement learning (RL) can resolve the issue and investigated throughout this thesis. The method that accounts for the system model explicitly is in particular interest. The model-based RL is exploited to solve the three representative sequential decision making problems; scheduling, supervisory optimization, and regulatory control. The problems are formulated with partially observable Markov decision process, control-affine state space model, and general state space model, and associated model-based RL algorithms are point based value iteration (PBVI), globalized dual heuristic programming (GDHP), and differential dynamic programming (DDP), respectively. The contribution for each problem can be written as follows: First, for the scheduling problem, we developed the closed-loop feedback scheme which highlights the strength compared to the direct optimization method. In the second case, the regulatory control problem is tackled by the function approximation method which relaxes the functional optimization to the finite dimensional vector space optimization. Deep neural networks (DNNs) is utilized as the approximator, and the advantages as well as the convergence analysis is performed in the thesis. Finally, for the supervisory optimization problem, we developed the novel constraint RL framework that uses the primal-dual DDP method. Various illustrative examples are demonstrated to validate the developed model-based RL algorithms and to support the thesis statement on which the dynamic programming method can be considered as a complementary method for direct optimization method.1. Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation and previous work 1 1.2 Statement of contributions 9 1.3 Outline of the thesis 11 2. Background and preliminaries 13 2.1 Optimization problem formulation and the principle of optimality 13 2.1.1 Markov decision process 15 2.1.2 State space model 19 2.2 Overview of the developed RL algorithms 28 2.2.1 Point based value iteration 28 2.2.2 Globalized dual heuristic programming 29 2.2.3 Differential dynamic programming 32 3. A POMDP framework for integrated scheduling of infrastructure maintenance and inspection 35 3.1 Introduction 35 3.2 POMDP solution algorithm 38 3.2.1 General point based value iteration 38 3.2.2 GapMin algorithm 46 3.2.3 Receding horizon POMDP 49 3.3 Problem formulation for infrastructure scheduling 54 3.3.1 State 56 3.3.2 Maintenance and inspection actions 57 3.3.3 State transition function 61 3.3.4 Cost function 67 3.3.5 Observation set and observation function 68 3.3.6 State augmentation 69 3.4 Illustrative example and simulation result 69 3.4.1 Structural point for the analysis of a high dimensional belief space 72 3.4.2 Infinite horizon policy under the natural deterioration process 72 3.4.3 Receding horizon POMDP 79 3.4.4 Validation of POMDP policy via Monte Carlo simulation 83 4. A model-based deep reinforcement learning method applied to finite-horizon optimal control of nonlinear control-affine system 88 4.1 Introduction 88 4.2 Function approximation and learning with deep neural networks 91 4.2.1 GDHP with a function approximator 91 4.2.2 Stable learning of DNNs 96 4.2.3 Overall algorithm 103 4.3 Results and discussions 107 4.3.1 Example 1: Semi-batch reactor 107 4.3.2 Example 2: Diffusion-Convection-Reaction (DCR) process 120 5. Convergence analysis of the model-based deep reinforcement learning for optimal control of nonlinear control-affine system 126 5.1 Introduction 126 5.2 Convergence proof of globalized dual heuristic programming (GDHP) 128 5.3 Function approximation with deep neural networks 137 5.3.1 Function approximation and gradient descent learning 137 5.3.2 Forward and backward propagations of DNNs 139 5.4 Convergence analysis in the deep neural networks space 141 5.4.1 Lyapunov analysis of the neural network parameter errors 141 5.4.2 Lyapunov analysis of the closed-loop stability 150 5.4.3 Overall Lyapunov function 152 5.5 Simulation results and discussions 157 5.5.1 System description 158 5.5.2 Algorithmic settings 160 5.5.3 Control result 161 6. Primal-dual differential dynamic programming for constrained dynamic optimization of continuous system 170 6.1 Introduction 170 6.2 Primal-dual differential dynamic programming for constrained dynamic optimization 172 6.2.1 Augmented Lagrangian method 172 6.2.2 Primal-dual differential dynamic programming algorithm 175 6.2.3 Overall algorithm 179 6.3 Results and discussions 179 7. Concluding remarks 186 7.1 Summary of the contributions 187 7.2 Future works 189 Bibliography 192Docto

Gas, Water and Solid Waste Treatment Technology

This book introduces a variety of treatment technologies, such as physical, chemical, and biological methods for the treatment of gas emissions, wastewater, and solid waste. It provides a useful source of information for engineers and specialists, as well as for undergraduate and postgraduate students, in the areas of environmental science and engineering