Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.50, No.14, 8585-8602, 2011
Analysis of Interaction Effects on Plantwide Operability
Modern chemical plants are complex and consist of many process units interconnected in various configurations (e.g., recycle, bypass, and heat integration). Because of these interconnections, the unit interactions often impose limitations on the plantwide operability of chemical processes, especially on the performance of decentralized controller. In this article, a plantwide operability analysis approach that explicitly considers the interactions based on network perspective is presented. It provides a uniform framework for the assessment of plantwide stability, stabilizability, and achievable dynamic performance in the case of regulatory control using the concept of dissipative systems. To focus on the effects of process dynamics and the interaction between subsystems on the plantwide operability, this analysis was developed with the assumption of state-feedback control. The above analysis problem involves linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which are convex and easy to solve.