An Integrated Scheduling and Control Framework for Plants Controlled by Distributed MPC Systems

Chemical plants are currently required to operate in an increasingly dynamic environment. This has increased the frequency of the scheduling decisions and fuelled efforts for the integration of scheduling and control. This paper presents an integrated scheduling and control formulation for plants controlled by distributed MPC systems. The action of the distributed MPC system is accounted for in the formulation, enabling it to predict the closed-loop process behavior. The performance of the proposed framework is demonstrated through linear case studies.