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Research
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Our research program focuses on the study of process dynamics and control, as well as process modeling, and optimization, with the vision that these activities should be integrated to lead to an optimal process operation. We take a fundamental approach to the understanding of problems facing the process industries and support it with laboratory experiments and computer simulations.
Research projects in the area of process control focus on the study of nonlinear processes, including distributed parameter systems. We are developing a nonlinear control design and analysis methodology based on functional expansions that opens the door for the application of many model-based control strategies within this framework. Model Predictive Control (MPC) of nonlinear systems is one of the techniques of interest to us, and a pH neutralization experiment is being used to demonstrate performance and feasibility of developed control schemes.
We are also interested in process monitoring with the emphasis on identifying abnormal process trends on-line and alleviating them before an alarm limit is encountered. This work exploits qualitative representation of trends using triangular episodes and fuzzy set membership, and hidden Markov models for classification. The use of multivariate statistical methods such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) for nonlinear processes is nother direction that our research group is pursuing towards on-line detection of process faults. This effort is in collaboration with Professor McDonald. |
Laboratories
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| Process Control Laboratory includes a pH neutralization process and a pilot-scale double-effect evaporator. Computer control and monitoring is carried out through PC-based workstations. Our group uses MATLAB/Simulink and various Toolboxes as well as the symbolic manipulation package MAPLE. Steady-state process simulations are carried out by AspenPlus and HYSYS is available for both steady-state and dynamic simulations. |
Support
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National Science Foundation
ASI Corporation |
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