Robust Economic MPC of the Absorption Column in Post-Combustion Carbon Capture through Zone Tracking

Benjamin Decardi-Nelson and Jinfeng Liu
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Benjamin Decardi-Nelson: Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1H9, Canada
Jinfeng Liu: Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1H9, Canada

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: Several studies have reported the importance of optimally operating the absorption column in a post-combustion CO 2 capture (PCC) plant. It has been demonstrated in our previous work how economic model predictive control (EMPC) has a great potential to improve the operation of the PCC plant. However, the use of a general economic objective such as maximizing the absorption efficiency of the column can cause EMPC to drive the state of the system close to the constraints. This may lead to solvent overcirculation and flooding, which are undesirable. In this work, we present an EMPC with zone tracking algorithm as an effective means to address this problem. The proposed control algorithm incorporates a zone tracking objective and an economic objective to form a multi-objective optimal control problem. To ensure that the zone tracking objective is achieved in the presence of model uncertainties and time-varying flue gas flow rate, we propose a method to modify the original target zone with a control invariant set. The zone modification method combines both ellipsoidal control invariant set techniques and a back-off strategy. The use of ellipsoidal control invariant sets ensure that the method is applicable to large scale systems such as the absorption column. We present several simulation case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed control algorithm to the absorption column in a post-combustion CO 2 capture plant.

Keywords: predictive control; robustness; zone tracking; post-combustion carbon capture; nonlinear systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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