Model predictive temperature control for a food transporter with door-openings

Temperature control of a food supplier vehicle with an insulated cool box (ICB) is critical. Air exchange during the door-opening is a main disturbance which heats up the ICB and accounts for a large part of total cooling load. Usually, this effect is not considered in the control strategy. In this paper a model predictive control (MPC) is used to optimise the temperature control and energy consumption and to handle the door-opening effects. Due to the thermal inertia of the cargo, it can be shown that a technique for estimating the temperature of the cargo instead of the air temperature would lead to a more effective control system. The system and control architecture is presented, the concept of the MPC including door-opening is given and simulation results demonstrate the performance of the concept.