Process operation optimization using system identification

Abstract Process optimization is an important topic in process industry, most process industry optimization works are based on mechanism models or performance test methods. However, it is very difficult to carry out optimization in actual operation because of the difficulty in obtaining the mechanism model, the difficulty in on-line measurement of objective function and the high test cost. In order to solve the problem, an online optimization method based on system identification is proposed. By replacing the unmeasurable variable with the measurable variable, the process model is identified on-line, and the gain of identified model is used as the optimization gradient to find the optimal variable value on-line. The method is verified using both simulation and real plant data.