A flexible low cost embedded system for Model Predictive Control of industrial processes

Model Predictive Control is an algorithm commonly used in the petrochemical and chemical sectors to control large processes. Its success can be traced to the fact that it is MIMO control algorithm with intrinsic dead-time compensation, capacity to handle the process constraints and with tuning parameters that are easily understandable in the time domain. Nevertheless, its usage is limited to large processes where the investment in the currently expensive advanced control systems are economically viable. Thus, this work proposes a low cost embedded MPC controller targeted at companies with medium and small processes that could have production improvements with the use of MPC. This paper details the current embedded system prototype and the results obtained with a hardware-in-the-loop experiment of an ethanol distillation process simulator.