(578r) Use of Commercial Process Simulator to Mode Transition Control of the Tennessee Eastman Challenge Problem

The Tennessee Eastman (TE) benchmark process is a realistic simulation of an actual commercial process for academic research and industrial training. Four setpoint changes, twenty different types of disturbances, and process constraints are specified in this plant simulation. It has been reported that the TE process is highly nonlinear and is open-loop unstable (Downs and Vogel, 1993). Since then, several researches have utilized this TE plant for testing performance of the proposed plantwide control structure. It is known that TE plant has seven possible operating modes for three different production mass ratios. By studying the characteristics of different TE plantwide control schemes presented in the literature, this work first apply commercial process design simulations to evaluating performance of these TE control systems. A feasible control structure is then designed to treat the mode transition control problem of this TE process. Plantwide control strategies are then developed to transfer the TE plant from one operating mode to other modes. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the satisfactory regulatory performance of the proposed TE control scheme.

Keywords: Tennessee Eastman process, Operating mode, Mode Transition control, Process flowsheet, Regulatory control performance