Fast Estimation of Plant Steady State, with Application to Static RTO

In the operation of continuous processes, many tasks require the knowledge of plant steady state at various operating points. This is for example the case in the context of kinetic modeling, response surface modeling and real-time optimization. If the computational techniques are in principle straightforward, the time needed to reach steady state represents the main limiting factor. This work proposes a novel way of speeding up the estimation of plant steady state through the use of feedback control and rate estimation. It must be emphasized here that rate estimation requires only some structural information of the plant and no rate model. Generally speaking, the context of the present investigation corresponds to industrial practice, where there is significant plant-model mismatch, which typically calls for the use of measurements to feed data-driven techniques.