Fault-tolerant control of a small reverse osmosis desalination plant with feed water bypass

Many applications of Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination plants require fault tolerance, in particular when human life depends on the water purity. However, they have been little studied in the literature from this point of view, in particular, when small plants use a feed water bypass to modify the permeate conductivity by mixing a little amount of feed water with the permeate. Such plants have a different system configuration and different dynamic behavior from standard plants. The present work is a study on Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) of a small plant with feed water bypass by using Model Predictive Control (MPC). Very satisfactory results show the advantages of using a fault-tolerant control system in this kind of plants.