Approximated Convex-lifting-based Robust Control for a Heat Exchanger

In this paper we investigate the effect of the implementation of convex-lifting-based robust control with approximated control law on a laboratory heat exchanger. The analyzed setup is the reference tracking problem of the heat exchanger output temperature. To analyze the efficiency of the approximated convex-lifting-based robust control, the tunable convex-lifting-based robust control, and the robust model predictive control were also implemented. The control performance was evaluated using the energy consumption and the corresponding carbon footprint emissions of the heat exchanger. The real-time computational complexity was evaluated based on the volume of the robust positive invariant set and the average time necessary to compute the value of the manipulated variable. The expected advantage of the robust control method is increased control performance and decreased computational complexity compared to the other designed robust controllers. This research is funded by the European Commission under the grant no. 101079342 (Fostering Opportunities Towards Slovak Excellence in Advanced Control for Smart Industries). The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic under the grants 1/0545/20, 1/0297/22, and the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the project APVV-20-0261. M. Horváthová would like to thank for financial contribution from the STU Grant scheme for Support of Young Researchers.