FPGA based QDMC control for reverse-osmosis water desalination system

Abstract

Model-based predictive control (MPC) is a widely used advanced control algorithm in process industries, such as chemical plants and oil refineries. Quadratic dynamic matrix control (QDMC) is one of the popular MPC strategies. In this paper, the QDMC controller is used to control a simulated reverse-osmosis (RO) water desalination system with spiral wound element (SWM). A cascaded control system was designed with the QDMC controller and a PID controller for the desalination process, where the QDMC controller optimizes the set point of the PID controller and directly controls one output. In order to make the implementation more convenient, this paper also studies the implementation of QDMC control system based on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. A support software is developed to help engineers adjust the parameters of the QDMC controller. Since the QDMC controller is implemented in an embedded system, the overall system cost is reduced, which is helpful to the application of RO desalination system.