AdvancedControl Strategy Combined with Solar Coolingfor Improving Ethanol Production in Fermentation Units.

Thiswork proposes the use of solar radiation as energy sourceto support energy demands in the optimal control process for ethanolproduction. The control system proposed for the reactor has two layers:the local one composed by PID (Proportional-Integrative-Derivative)controllers for the pH, level, and temperature loops of the reactorand the master controller which uses an advanced MIMO (Multiple-Inputand Multiple-Output) MPC (Model Predictive Control) strategy. Thecontrol of the solar cooling system is performed by means of a switchingcontrol scheme. Since there is no availability of a practical systemwhich integrates the experimental solar cooling plant and a fermentationunit, the Hardware in the Loop technique has been performed on theplant of Centro de Investigación de Energía Solar (CIESOL),located at the University of Almería (Spain), interconnectedwith a simulator that represents the ethanol fermentation in Brazilianfactories. Three scenarios are analyzed in detail, in which the incrementsin ethanol production are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]