Economic control of methane reforming

We present a control system for a catalytic fuel reformer that optimizes economic performance. The control strategy is based on moving horizon estimation (MHE) and model predictive control (MPC). Particular features of the control strategy is the estimation of the energy content of the outlet gas mixture without direct measurements of outlet composition, the use of a metric for coking susceptibility as a constraint on the inlet gas composition, a cost based metric for evaluating decisions on controller commands, and the ability to meet constraints on reactor temperature and outlet gas energy content.