Two-tier control structure design methodology applied to heat exchanger networks

Abstract Because of its paramount importance in the successful industrial control strategy of a given heat exchanger network (HEN), the control structure designs for providing appropriate manipulated variable (MV) and controlled variable (CV) pairings have received considerable attention. However, quite frequently HENs with such control structures face the problem of hard constraints, typically holding the HENs at less controlled operating space. So both the MV pairings and the above control pairings should be considered to design a control structure. This paper investigates the systematic incorporation of the two pairings, and presents a methodology for designing such two-tier control structure. This is developed based on the sequential strategy, coupling an indirect-tier with direct-tier control structure design, wherein the intention is realized in the former stage and the latter is implemented for further optimization. The MV identification and pairing are achieved through variations in heat load of heat exchangers to design the indirect-tier control structure. Then the direct-tier control structure is followed the relative gain array (RGA) pairing rules. With the proposed methodology, on the one hand, it generates an explicit connection between the MV pairings and the HEN configuration, and the quantitative interaction measure is improved to avoid the multiple solutions to break the relationship among all the control pairings into individuals; on the other hand, a two-tier control structure reveals control potentials and control system design requirements, this may avoid complex and economically unfavourable control and HEN structures. The application of proposed framework is illustrated with two cases involving the dynamic simulation analysis, the quantitative assessment and the random test.