A run-of-mine (ROM) ore milling circuit is primarily used to grind incoming ore containing precious metals to a powder fine enough to liberate the valuable minerals contained therein. The ground ore has a product particle size specification that is set by the downstream separation unit. A ROM ore milling circuit typically consists of a mill, sump and classifier (most commonly a hydrocyclone). These circuits are difficult to control because of unmeasurable process outputs, non-linearities, time delays, large unmeasured disturbances and complex models with modelling uncertainties. The ROM ore milling circuit should be controlled to meet the final product quality specification, but throughput should also be maximised. This further complicates ROM ore grinding mill circuit control, since an inverse non-linear relationship exists between the quality and throughput. ROM ore grinding mill circuit control is constantly evolving to find the best control method with peripheral tools to control the plant. Although many studies have been conducted, more are continually undertaken, since the controller designs are usually based on various assumptions and the required measurements in the grinding mill circuits are often unavailable. / To improve controller performance, many studies investigated the inclusion of additional manipulated variables (MVs) in the controller formulation to help control process disturbances, or to provide some form of functional control. Model predictive control (MPC) is considered one of the best advanced process control (APC) techniques and linear MPC controllers have been implemented on grinding mill circuits, while various other advanced controllers have been investigated and tested in simulation. Because of the complexity of grinding mill circuits non-linear MPC (NMPC) controllers have achieved better results in simulations where a wider operating region is required. In the search for additional MVs some researchers have considered including the discrete dynamics as part of the controller formulation instead of segregating them from the APC or base-layer controllers. The discrete dynamics are typically controlled using a layered approach. Discrete dynamics are on/off elements and in the case of a closed-loop grinding mill circuit the discrete elements can be on/off activation variables for feed conveyor belts to select which stockpile is used, selecting whether a secondary grinding stage should be active or not, and switching hydrocyclones in a hydrocyclone cluster. Discrete dynamics are added directly to the APC controllers by using hybrid model predictive control (HMPC). HMPC controllers have been designed for grinding mill circuits, but none of them has considered the switching of hydrocyclones as an additional MV and they only include linear dynamics for the continuous elements. This study addresses this gap by implementing a hybrid NMPC (HNMPC) controller that can switch the hydrocyclones in a cluster. / A commonly used continuous-time grinding mill circuit model with one hydrocyclone is adapted to contain a cluster of hydrocyclones, resulting in a hybrid model. The model parameters are refitted to ensure that the initial design steady-state conditions for the model are still valid with the cluster. The novel contribution of this research is the design of a HNMPC controller using a cluster of hydrocyclones as an additional MV. The HNMPC controller is formulated using the complete nonlinear hybrid model and a genetic algorithm (GA) as the solver. An NMPC controller is also designed and implemented as the base case controller in order to evaluate the HNMPC controller’s performance. To further illustrate the functional control benefits of including the hydrocyclone cluster as an MV, a linear optimisation objective was added to the HNMPC to increase the grinding circuit throughput, while maintaining the quality specification. The results show that the HNMPC controller outperforms the NMPC one in terms of setpoint tracking, disturbance rejection, and process optimisation objectives. The GA is shown to be a good solver for HNMPC, resulting in a robust controller that can still control the plant even when state noise is added to the simulation. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / National Research Foundation (DAAD-NRF) / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / MEng / Unrestricted

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are considered the stepping stone for the integration of civil unmanned vehicles in the National Airspace System (NAS) because of their low cost and risk. Such systems are aimed at a variety of applications including search and rescue, surveillance, communications, traffic monitoring and inspection of buildings, power lines and bridges. Amidst these systems, small helicopters play an important role because of their capability to hold a position, to maneuver in tight spaces and to take off and land from virtually anywhere. Nevertheless civil adoption of such systems is minimal, mostly because of regulatory problems that in turn are due to safety concerns. This dissertation examines the risk to safety imposed by UAS in general and small helicopters in particular, focusing on accidents resulting in a ground impact. To improve the performance of small helicopters in this area, the use of autonomous autorotation is proposed. This research goes beyond previous work in the area of autonomous autorotation by developing an on-line, model-based, real-time controller that is capable of handling constraints and different cost functions. The approach selected is based on a non-linear model-predictive controller, that is augmented by a neural network to improve the speed of the non-linear optimization. The immediate benefit of this controller is that a class of failures that would otherwise result in an uncontrolled crash and possible injuries or fatalities can now be accommodated. Furthermore besides simply landing the helicopter, the controller is also capable of minimizing the risk of serious injury to people in the area. This is accomplished by minimizing the kinetic energy during the last phase of the descent. The presented research is designed to benefit the entire UAS community as well as the public, by allowing for safer UAS operations, which in turn also allow faster and less expensive integration of UAS in the NAS.

Yes / The need for the development of clean but still profitable processes and the study of low environmental impact and economically convenient management policies for them are two challenges for the years to come. This paper tries to give a first answer to the second of these needs, limited to the area of discontinuous productions. It deals with the development of a robust methodology for the profitable and clean management of (fed-)batch units under uncertainty, which can be referred to as a robust sustainability-oriented model-based optimization & control strategy. This procedure is specifically designed to ensure elevated process performances along with low-cost utilities usage reduction in real-time, simultaneously allowing for the effect of any external perturbation. In this way, conventional offline methods for process sustainable optimization can be easily overcome since the most suitable management policy, aimed at process sustainability, can be dynamically determined and applied in any operating condition. This leads to a significant step forward with respect to the nowadays options in terms of sustainable process management, that drives towards a cleaner and more energy-efficient future. The proposed theoretical framework is validated and tested on a case study based on the well-known fed-batch version of the Williams-Otto process to demonstrate its tangible benefits. The results achieved in this case study are promising and show that the framework is very effective in case of typical process operation while it is partially effective in case of unusual/unlikely critical process disturbances. Future works will go towards the removal of this weakness and further improvement in the algorithm robustness.

In the process industries, cooling capacity is an important enabler for the facility to manufacture on specification product. The cooling water network is an important part of the over-all cooling system of the facility. In this research a cooling water circuit consisting of 3 cooling towers in parallel, 2 cooling water pumps in parallel, and 11 heat exchangers in parallel, is modelled. The model developed is based on first principles and captures the dynamic, non-linear, interactive nature of the plant. The modelled plant is further complicated by continuous, as well as discrete process variables, giving the model a hybrid nature. Energy consumption is included in the model as it is a very important parameter for plant operation. The model is fitted to real industry data by using a particle swarm optimisation approach. The model is suitable to be used for optimisation and control purposes. Cooling water networks are often not instrumented and actuated, nor controlled or optimised. Significant process benefits can be achieved by better process end-user temperature control, and direct monetary benefits can be obtained from electric power minimisation. A Hybrid Non-Linear Model Predictive Control strategy is developed for these control objectives, and simulated on the developed first principles dynamic model. Continuous and hybrid control cases are developed, and tested on process scenarios that reflect conditions seen in a real plant. Various alternative techniques are evaluated in order to solve the Hybrid Non-Linear Control problem. Gradient descent with momentum is chosen and configured to be used to solve the continuous control problem. For the discrete control problem a graph traversal algorithm is developed and joined to the continuous control algorithm to form a Hybrid Non-Linear Model Predictive controller. The potential monetary benefits that can be obtained by the plant owner through implementing the designed control strategy, are estimated. A powerful computation platform is designed for the plant model and controller simulations. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / PhD / Unrestricted

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:56:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GasparFDJ_DISSERT.pdf: 3388304 bytes, checksum: 086a8f61099f69978a8b9f477f351d24 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-01-23 / Petr?leo Brasileiro SA - PETROBRAS / Slugging is a well-known slugging phenomenon in multiphase flow, which may cause problems such as vibration in pipeline and high liquid level in the separator. It can be classified according to the place of its occurrence. The most severe, known as slugging in the riser, occurs in the vertical pipe which feeds the platform. Also known as severe slugging, it is capable of causing severe pressure fluctuations in the flow of the process, excessive vibration, flooding in separator tanks, limited production, nonscheduled stop of production, among other negative aspects that motivated the production of this work . A feasible solution to deal with this problem would be to design an effective method for the removal or reduction of the system, a controller. According to the literature, a conventional PID controller did not produce good results due to the high degree of nonlinearity of the process, fueling the development of advanced control techniques. Among these, the model predictive controller (MPC), where the control action results from the solution of an optimization problem, it is robust, can incorporate physical and /or security constraints. The objective of this work is to apply a non-conventional non-linear model predictive control technique to severe slugging, where the amount of liquid mass in the riser is controlled by the production valve and, indirectly, the oscillation of flow and pressure is suppressed, while looking for environmental and economic benefits. The proposed strategy is based on the use of the model linear approximations and repeatedly solving of a quadratic optimization problem, providing solutions that improve at each iteration. In the event where the convergence of this algorithm is satisfied, the predicted values of the process variables are the same as to those obtained by the original nonlinear model, ensuring that the constraints are satisfied for them along the prediction horizon. A mathematical model recently published in the literature, capable of representing characteristics of severe slugging in a real oil well, is used both for simulation and for the project of the proposed controller, whose performance is compared to a linear MPC / A golfada ? um regime inst?vel do fluxo multif?sico, com oscila??es de press?o e vaz?o abruptas no processo de produ??o de petr?leo, podendo ocasionar problemas tais como vibra??o na tubula??o e alto n?vel de l?quido nos separadores. Pode ser classificada de acordo com seu local de ocorr?ncia. A mais severa destas, conhecida como golfada no riser, ocorre na tubula??o vertical que alimenta a plataforma. Conhecida tamb?m como golfada severa, ela ? capaz de causar bruscas oscila??es na press?o, nas vaz?es do processo, vibra??o excessiva, inunda??o dos tanques separadores, produ??o limitada, parada n?o programada da plataforma, entre outros aspectos negativos que motivaram a produ??o deste trabalho. Uma solu??o vi?vel para lidar com tal problema seria projetar um m?todo efetivo para a remo??o ou diminui??o deste regime, como um controlador. De acordo com a literatura, o controlador convencional PID n?o apresenta bons resultados devido ao alto grau de n?o linearidade do processo, o que impulsionou o desenvolvimento de t?cnicas avan?adas de controle. Dentre estas, o controlador preditivo, cuja a??o de controle resulta da solu??o de um problema de otimiza??o, al?m de ser uma t?cnica que apresenta robustez e pode incorporar restri??es f?sicas e/ou de seguran?a. O objetivo deste trabalho ? estudar a aplica??o de uma t?cnica de controle preditivo n?o linear ao controle de golfada severa, visando controlar a quantidade de massa l?quida no riser atuando na v?lvula de produ??o e, indiretamente, suprimir as oscila??es de vaz?o e press?o. Com a finalidade de obter benef?cios ambientais e econ?micos. A t?cnica de controle preditivo proposta baseia-se no uso de aproxima??es lineares do modelo e na resolu??o repetida de um problema de otimiza??o quadr?tica que proporciona solu??es que melhoram a cada itera??o. No caso em que a converg?ncia desse algoritmo ? satisfeita, os valores preditos das vari?veis do processo s?o iguais ?queles que seriam obtidos pelo modelo n?o linear original, garantindo que as restri??es nessas vari?veis sejam satisfeitas ao longo do horizonte de predi??o. Um modelo matem?tico publicado recentemente na literatura, capaz de representar caracter?sticas da golfada severa em um po?o real, ? utilizado tanto para a simula??o, quanto para projeto do controlador proposto, cujo desempenho ? comparado ao de um controlador preditivo linear

Systematické řízení tepelných a elektrických toků v plně elektrických automobilech se stává velmi důležitým, protože v těchto typech automobilů není k dispozici dostatek odpadního tepla pro vytápění kabiny. Aby v zimním období nedocházelo ke snížení dojezdu, je nutné použití technologií, které umožní snížení spotřeby energie nutné k vytápění kabiny (např. tepelné čerpadlo, zásobník tepla). Je také zapotřebí vytvořit řídicí algoritmy pro tato zařízení, aby byl zajištěn jejich optimální provoz. V letním období je nezbytné řídit tepelné toky v rámci elektromobilu tak, aby nedocházelo k nadměrnému vybíjení baterie kvůli chlazení kabiny a dalších částí. Tato práce řeší jak návrh řídicích algoritmů, tak i vývoj rozhodovacího algoritmu, který zajistí směřování tepelných toků.