"Optimal dynamic operation of chemical processes: assessment of the last 20 years and current research opportunities."
James B. Rawlings, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
Abstract
This talk provides a critical assessment of the research progress in
the fields of dynamic operation of chemical processes and process
control. The following points are discussed:
- What new intellectual ideas, concepts, and tools have emerged from this research field during the last 20 years.
- How successfully have the research innovations in problem conceptualization, formulation, and solution been reduced to industrial practice.
- What application areas have benefited from this research.
Next we present a selection of open problems and research challenges.
These research challenges are formulated by enumerating the current
industrial needs in different application areas, and identifying
common themes that can be addressed by developing new tools in systems
theory and engineering. We focus on two topics of interest to our
research group:
- How do we distribute tasks in a large-scale application to a
collection of agents/controllers so that the overall system achieves
near optimal operation.
- How do we use systems and control tools to address the larger
goal of optimizing process economic performance rather than
traditional lower level tasks such as setpoint tracking and
disturbance rejection.
Slides
