(212c) Advances in Developing New MPC and Advanced Control Solutions

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an advanced control technology that has been used in industry since the early 1970’s to improve process performance with multivariate coordination, predictive, explicit dynamic models, active constraint enforcement and disturbance rejection.  Starting in the refining and petrochemical sectors through attempts at more effective technology implementation, MPC has had a slow expansion into new industrial sectors.  In other words to maximize the return on engineering time, applications are initially developed at high cost and redeployed more efficiently at new sites covering the same industrial application.

But with experiences in minerals processing, pulp and paper, biofuels, dairy and broad CPG examples we can start to identify what support tools makes developing a brand new industrial application easier and faster.  The answer seems to include staffing strategies, specific available technologies and engineering practices as well as commercial strategies that support reducing the initial investment hurdle and risks.  A broad series of innovative application case studies along with identification of methods and technology enablers will be presented.  The understanding of how to effectively develop a new industrial application successfully provides a generally interesting concept with MPC as the specific focus in this paper.