Abstract:
Although fuel gas systems represent a large part of industrial chemical processes,
there has been limited literature on their modelling and control. The available literature typically
neglects the effects of fuel gas consumer dynamics, leaving much of the system’s important
dynamic behaviour omitted. This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on fuel gas
control and improve an existing fuel gas control benchmark problem by including the effects
of fuel gas consumer dynamics on the system. Two model predictive controllers (MPC) were
designed, where the first MPC uses a model that neglects the consumer dynamics and the second
MPC uses a model that includes the consumer dynamics. It was found that the MPC neglecting
consumer dynamics has a pressure variability 5.8 times higher than the MPC that includes the
dynamics. It also has a relative sensitivity index (RSI) of 7.2, indicating the presence of model-plant mismatches (MPM) affecting controller performance.
