Plant-wide control of a Gas Plant using a structured method

Very few unbiased publications have appeared in the literature comparing control effectiveness using MPC versus a well-designed conventional control system. Most of the MPC applications reported have considered fairly simple processes with a small number of manipulated variables. There are no published reports that discuss the application of MPC to an entire complex chemical plant, with one notable exception. It is found that a good control structure provides effective control, independent of any particular controller algorithm, while a poor one cannot be greatly improved with any algorithm (MPC or PID controllers). In this paper, a Gas Plant is simulated in a rather realistic environment by HYSYS, and the obtained data is in connection with MATLAB^®. To have more realistic simulations, the model of process is simulated in HYSYS^®, and the data is transferred (real-time) to MATLAB^® for identification and control purposes.