Modelling of Chlorine Contact Tank and the Combined Applications of Linear Model Predictive Control and Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

A dynamic model is developed to present chlorine decay in chlorine contact tank, and a single-input single-output (SISO) model that presents both chlorine dosing and decay process is developed in Simulink of Matlab software with considerations of the process disturbances of temperature and stagnant flow in the tank. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of chlorine transport and decay in the tank is also developed with the use of mixture multiphase model to present the chlorine mixing and decay models in the tank. To optimally control free chlorine residual (FCR) concentration in the SISO system, a linear model predictive control (LMPC) is designed using the SISO system and LMPC control algorithm. The LMPC control objective is to regulate the optimal mass flow rates of gaseous chlorine to control the chlorine decay process inputs/outputs within the constraints. The results on the LMPC simulation using reference data from a real water plant show that the LMPC can control the FCR concentration in the tank within the constraint by regulating the optimal mass flow rates of gaseous chlorine. Commercial CFD software, FluentTM, has been used in this study to simulate the FCR distribution in the CCT channel based on the LMPC result.