Enhancement of model predictive control implementation on a DCS PCS7

It is well-known that the implementation of Advanced Process Control (APC) techniques such as Model Predictive Control (MPC) can enhance the performance of the plant operations in comparison to the common PID controller. However, the limited capabilities of most Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and their simple available controller libraries do not allow flexible and effective implementations of many advanced control approaches. The main purpose of this paper is to focus on simple and effective implementation of MPC on a Siemens DCS called “PCS7”. While PCS7 allows a limited version of MPC called Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) (i.e. available in its library), our aim is to provide some new tools on PCS7 for simpler and faster implementations of more general versions of MPC with better performances. First, the available DMC block is invoked for a case study. Then, some new blocks for more advanced MPC implementations using SCL (Structured Control Language) programming language are developed and provided. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the newly developed blocks. Besides, it is shown that the new blocks has lower hardware and software limitations.