Real-time Implementation of Adaptive Receding Horizon Control for Level of Coupled Tank Practical Pilot Plant

This paper presents a novel auto-tuning approach to control the level of the fluids in tanks and reactors without interrupting the normal process operation. An auto-tuned procedure has been incorporated to generalize the auto-tuning scheme to efficiently respond to any set-point change outside any predefined operating span. This algorithm offers an optimization based tuning procedure with certain robustness properties for an offset free RHC based on crude information of the plant. This algorithm obtained by an online recursive least squares (RLS) identification based on forgetting factor modification and a constraint receding horizon control is based on modified Active-Set method for optimization problem. The stability and robustness of reviewed methods are proved under some conditions. Performance of the proposed algorithm is practically evaluated in a real pilot plant within a networked control system (NCS) configuration, realized by industrial Ethernet and Foundation Fieldbus technology. An extensive series of test scenarios has been conducted to explore efficiency of the proposed methodology under varying operating set-point.