Stable feedback linearization-based economic MPC scheme for thermal power plant

The major concern of modern power plants is changing from tracking control to environmental and economic issues. The economic model predictive control (EMPC) scheme, which incorporates the boiler-turbine unit's dynamic tracking and economic optimization into one online framework, can well enhance the dynamic economic performance. Considering the strong nonlinearity that existed in the boiler-turbine system, this paper presents an advanced EMPC scheme based on the input/output feedback linearization (IOFL) approach. The boiler-turbine dynamics are converted via the IOFL method to a linear form, which can be readily used to constitute the standard EMPC scheme. A dual-mode method is adopted in this paper to guarantee the stability of the IOFL EMPC strategy for the boiler-turbine system, in which the first-mode optimizes the economic objective function while preserving the states of the system within a feasible region, and the second-mode moves the system state to the optimum operating point using an auxiliary controller. The simulations under the MATLAB environment demonstrate that the application of the IOFL-based EMPC scheme enhances the economic and dynamic output performance under load demand changes in comparison with fuzzy hierarchical MPC and fuzzy economic MPC schemes.