• Cumene
• MPC
• Simulazione rigorosa

This thesis is carried out in the Chemical Process Control Laboratory (CPCLab) within the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering and concerns the fields of rigorous process simulation and advanced control.
The goal of this thesis is to integrate a simulated process with a model-based advanced controller in order to find the economical optimum.
The process chosen for the simulation is cumene production, in particular the plug flow reactor and the associated separation system, including benzene recirculation. The objective of the control system is to reduce losses of row materials and finite product without excessive energy consumption.
The process is rigorously simulated in UniSim Design, identified as a state-space model and controlled by a model predictive controller in Python with open-source codes recently developed in CPCLab.