SOFT SENSOR-BASED PREDICTIVE CONTROL OF INDUSTRIAL FLUID CATALYTIC CRACKING PROCESSES

The operation of Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) processes exhibits str ongly nonlinear and highly interactive dynamic behaviour as well as ha ving poorly understood reaction kinetics with many unmeasured operatin g variables which can play key roles in determining performance and gi ve rise to difficult control problems. Soft sensors, which use easily measured and continuously available temperature, pressure and flowrate measurements, along with system models which make use of conservation equations to assimilate on-line learning parameters, are essential fo r advanced control. This article reports the application of a predicti ve control strategy using two soft sensors on an existing industrial F CC process. Both approaches resulted in improvements using this approa ch and the general issues are discussed in terms of generic procedures .