DC-3: Name of the DC candidate

Contact

E-mail

Project

Safety-aware predictive control methods with robust contingency plans

Host organization

NTNU

Supervisors

Prof. Johannes Jäschke (Main, NTNU); Prof. Gürkan Sin (co-supervisor, DTU)

Duration

36 months

Objectives

The overall objective is to design novel algorithms for short-term optimal operation that always provide contingency plans to bring the process plant to a safe operation regime in the presence of uncertainty by combining methods from robust model predictive control, state estimation with online risk monitoring methods (DC-4) to account for fault scenarios, and to provide prioritized routes to reach a safe operation region.

The contingency plans will consider the present state of the plant, as well as possible future degradation, maintenance, and safety actions, while rigorously taking uncertainty into account. A case study for hydrogen production and liquefaction will be used to demonstrate the capability and robustness of the approach.

DC-3 will integrate the methods from DC-4 into the developed framework through close collaboration.

Expected results

  1. Proposal of a robust, fault-tolerant, and safety-focused model-based control strategy that provides contingency plans for equipment and sensor failure,

  2. Validation of the approach on simulations,

  3. Comprehensive robustness analysis,

  4. Inclusion of models from DC-4 in the framework,

  5. Validation of the safety-aware predictive control methods with robust contingency plans in an industrial case study for hydrogen production,

  6. Prototype software for fault-tolerant model predictive control with contingency plans.

Planned secondments 

  1. DTU, M15, 3 months: Training on machine learning models for application in the control framework 
  2. KAIROS, M28, 2 months: Application of predictive control to a renewable hydrogen case study