Dynamic Modeling and Economic Model Predictive Control with Production Mode Switching for an Industrial Catalytic Naphtha Reforming Process

Abstract

Catalytic naphtha reforming is a crucial process in producing gasoline or aromatic compounds. The characteristic of two production modes gives rise to different economic optimization and control objectives. In the present work, we design an economic model predictive control (EMPC) with a production mode switching strategy to cope with these problems. First, a rigorous dynamic process model is established to simulate the naphtha reforming process. Then, we formulate different economic objective functions and simplify the process model for each production mode, and also enable the EMPC controller to switch the production mode automatically according to empirical equations. Three case studies are presented to test the performance of our proposed control strategy. The results show that the designed EMPC controller with production mode switching can successfully overcome the economic disturbances and improve the production profits in different production modes. In addition, it also has a fast response time to ...