Control of the temperature in a petroleum refinery heating furnace based on a robust modified Smith predictor

Vicente Feliu-Batlle; Raul Rivas-Perez

doi:10.1016/j.isatra.2020.12.006

Control of the temperature in a petroleum refinery heating furnace based on a robust modified Smith predictor

ISA Trans. 2021 Jun:112:251-270. doi: 10.1016/j.isatra.2020.12.006. Epub 2020 Dec 5.

Authors

Vicente Feliu-Batlle¹, Raul Rivas-Perez²

Affiliations

¹ Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Campus Universitario s/n, Ciudad Real, 13071, Spain; Instituto de Investigaciones Energéticas y Aplicaciones Industriales, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Campus Universitario s/n, Ciudad Real, 13071, Spain. Electronic address: vicente.feliu@uclm.es.
² Department of Automatica and Computer Science, Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana CUJAE, Calle 114 No 11901, Marianao, Habana, 19390, Cuba. Electronic address: rivas@automatica.cujae.edu.cu.

PMID: 33308861
DOI: 10.1016/j.isatra.2020.12.006

Abstract

The robust control of the crude oil outlet temperature uniformity in a heating furnace of a petroleum refinery is addressed. A reliable dynamic model of the nominal process has been attained using a system identification procedure based on real-time data. This procedure yields a second order model with a dominant time-delay. A PI controller embedded in a modified Smith predictor structure is therefore proposed. Sensitivity and robustness properties of this control system are analytically obtained. Based on that, a tuning procedure is developed for this control system which has lower sensitivity to disturbances than the standard Smith predictor while guaranteeing the system stability when plant parameters change. Simulations are carried out of the proposed control system and other well-known linear advanced process control systems. The comparison of the obtained results shows the superior performance of our control system in most cases, both in rejecting a variety of disturbances and in maintaining the closed-loop stability when the process parameters change.

Keywords: Fuel savings; Heating furnace; Outlet temperature uniformity control; Petroleum refinery; Robust modified Smith predictor; System identification.