Abstract
In order to optimize the trade-off between components life and energy consumption, the integration of a system health management and control modules is required. This paper proposes the integration of model predictive control (MPC) with a fatigue estimation approach that minimizes the damage of the components of a pasteurization plant. The fatigue estimation is assessed with the rainflow counting algorithm. Using data from this algorithm, a simplified model that characterizes the health of the system is developed and integrated with MPC. The MPC controller objective is modified by adding an extra criterion that takes into account the accumulated damage. But, a steady-state offset is created by adding this extra criterion. Finally, by including an integral action in the MPC controller, the steady-state error for regulation purpose is eliminated. The proposed control scheme is validated in simulation using a simulator of a utility-scale pasteurization plant.
Highlights
Pasteurization is a quite common procedure in the food industry
The model predictive control (MPC) controller objective is modified by adding an extra criterion that takes into account the accumulated damage
The integration of a system health management module with MPC control is done by including a fatigue-based model using the rain-flow counting approach and adding an extra criterion in the control objective function that takes into account the accumulated damage
Summary
Pasteurization is a quite common procedure in the food industry. The pasteurization process implies applying heat to some products such as milk, cream, beer and others. Pasteurization implies that a food product is exposed to some temperature profile during a predetermined period of time, in order to reduce the proportion of microorganisms. This process is distributed into three sections that are heating, cooling and regeneration sections. Because of the high number of load cycles that occur during the life of the pasteurization’s pump, fatigue measurement is of particular importance in pasteurization control. For this reason, interest in the integration of control with a fatigue-based prognosis of components has increased in recent years. This rule commonly called the Miners rule is being currently used throughout the industry and in academia [12]
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