Model Predictive Control For Direct Steam Generation in Paraboloidal Dishes

The control of solar thermal systems is challenging due to the non-linear dynamic behaviour of the heat transfer process occurring at the receivers, such as direct steam generation. Model predictive controllers can outperform classical control approaches by incorporating nonlinear model behaviour and constraints. This study presents a model predictive controller based on a piecewise affine approximation of a direct steam generation receiver that explicitly incorporates constraints. Simulations in this study show that a piecewise affine approximation based model predictive controller outperforms both a MPC based on a linear approximation of the receiver and a classic state-space controller.