Abstract
Abstract This work presents a framework for the optimal control of several sterilization units operating in parallel to satisfy the thermal processing needs of a process motivated by a food industrial facility producing canned fish ( Georgiadis et al., 2020 ). The objective is to consider all relevant control challenges that arise during the operation of the sterilizers such as the required microbial lethality set-point while minimizing the overall processing time. Furthermore, energy consumption minimization is also considered. To this end, a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) framework is developed and applied in multiple sterilization units operating in parallel and sharing the same steam network. A novel reduced order process model is derived and validated. Simulation experiments reveal significant benefits by using the NMPC framework with respect to the availability of shared resources without any loss of performance.
Published Version
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