An overview of modern control strategies for optimizing thermal desalination plants

Abstract

Water is the essence of life in arid Middle East Countries. The implementation of robust control strategies enhance the efficiency, safety and reliability of the desalination process. A higher degree of automation is essential for today's large scale complex desalination plants. To achieve optimal design and operation of these plants, careful control system design is required. Even when an acceptable design is completed, the question remains as to whether a better design could be found. Conventional techniques provide for analysis and design of the systems which more or less satisfy arbitrary set of performance requirements. However modern control techniques provide an optimum solution based on specified performance index. In this paper an exposition of merits and demerits of conventional and modern control strategies is outlined. A number of optimal procedures that are used for system identification are highlighted. A brief description of Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) desalination process and controls is given. Novel control strategies for a number of important loops of a large MSF desalination plant are presented.