A Hybrid MPC Strategy Applied to Flotation Process

Abstract

Several dynamic models are able to represent the phenomenological behaviour of a flotation process. In addition, the interest in developing control strategies for large-scale processes has led to formulate novel methodologies which allow to consider the global performance of a plant, facilitating the design, validation and evaluation of more complex optimizing control strategies. In this work, we first develop a dynamic hybrid model for flotation which is calibrated with industrial data. Subsequently, a hybrid prediction model is obtained by applying identification techniques to the different scenarios and it is used to formulate a hybrid model predictive control (HMPC) strategy for flotation. Our simulation results show that the proposed methodology is suitable for modelling the behaviour of a flotation process and its control stage. This is achieved minimizing the tail grade of a flotation line considering several operating modes and constrains, providing a robust hybrid model predictive control strategy.