Model Predictive Control of a Wet Limestone Flue Gas Desulfurization Pilot Plant

A model predictive control (MPC) strategy based on a dynamic matrix (DMC) is designed and applied to a wet limestone flue gas desulfurization (WLFGD) pilot plant to evaluate what enhancement in control performance can be achieved with respect to a conventional decentralized feedback control strategy. The results reveal that MPC can significantly improve both reference tracking and disturbance rejection. For disturbance rejection, the main control objective in WLFGD plants, selection of tuning parameters and sample time, is of paramount importance due to the fast effect of the main disturbance (inlet SO2 load to the absorber) on the most important controlled variable (outlet flue gas SO2 concentration). The proposed MPC strategy can be easily applied to full-scale WLFGD plants.