The air separation unit is a kind of complex chemical equipment to produce gaseous and liquid oxygen, argon and nitrogen. Its products are widely used in steelmaking, chemical engineering, food processing, and semiconductor fabrication. Nevertheless, its safe and effective operation is a challenge for the characteristic of high nonlinearity and the requirement of frequent load change.
Recently, ZOU Tao's research team at Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have proposed an automatic load change coordinated control system for air separation units, to realize safe and effective operation. The study was published in Control Engineering Practice.
To solve the tight coupling problem resulted from high thermal integration and material recycling, the researchers come up with a robust control strategy based on loosely coupled model and priority setting of controlled variables.
Besides, for the nonlinearity caused by wide-range frequent load change, they presented an incremental load balancing calculation method based on neural network.
Finally, the researchers integrated a nonlinear hysteresis control strategy for the oxygen compressors into the whole controller to realize the automatic load change coordinated control of the air separation units.
This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
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