(705c) Sustainability Dynamics and Control for Distributed Manufacturing of Renewable Energy

Prediction of a long-term sustainability performance of a large-scale system is always very challenging largely due to the existence of various types of uncertainties. Such a system usually consists of a number of interacted sub-systems, each of which could be structurally and operationally sophisticated. Distributed biodiesel manufacturing in a large geographical region could be a good example. A further challenge is the development of effective strategies, frequently for implementation in multiple stages, to improve regional sustainability performance in a time horizon of interest. Since sustainability is an act of balance among economic, environmental, and social domains, thus from system and control science point of view, sustainability assessment, performance prediction, and decision making is a non-conventional multi-objective, multi-input-multi-output control problem [1].

Recently, we developed a hierarchical control method to enhance manufacturing sustainability, which was successfully applied to a biodiesel manufacturing process [2]. In that framework, a two-layered hierarchical control scheme is introduced to implement strategic and tactical control for dynamic sustainability control. In this paper, we introduce an extended hierarchical control method, which is capable of conducting an integrated analysis of subsystems’ dynamics and control strategies and developing strategies for coordinated control of the entire system to achieve a long-term sustainability goal under various uncertainties. The introduced methodology is tested through a case study on the sustainability performance prediction and improvement of a geographically distributed manufacturing of biodiesel using different feedstocks and different manufacturing technologies.

References:

[1] Moradi-Aliabadi, M. and Y. Huang, "Multistage Optimization for Chemical Process Sustainability Enhancement under Uncertainty," ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, 4(11), 6133-6143, 2016.

[2] Moradi-Aliabadi, M. and Y. Huang, “Decision Support for Enhancement of Manufacturing Sustainability: A Hierarchical Control Approach,” ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 6(4), 4809–4820, 2018.