HIERARCHICAL CONTROL FOR ETHYLENE PRODUCTION IN PETROCHEMICAL INSTALLATIONS

The main objective of this work is the design and implementation of a hierarchical control solution for chemical and petrochemical processes, namely the control and optimization of the ethylene pyrolysis reactor, the key-installation in the petrochemical industry. The hierarchical control structures are organized on two levels of automation. The execution or control level, on the one hand, has to fulfill two important tasks: the data acquisition from the physical plant and the regulation of the major parameters of the process. The supervisory level, on the other hand, is referred to the optimization of the production.