A review of anti-surge control systems of compressors and advanced fault-tolerant control techniques for integration perspective

In this review paper, the anti-surge control (ASC) of the compressors and fault-tolerant control (FTC) systems are described from the perspective of integration for reliability enhancement against faults in the system components. It explains the phenomenon of a surge in the compressors, surge precursors, and the potential damage caused by this surge. The explanation of surge avoidance methods in compressors incorporated with modern surge control systems is described along with their applications. The sizing of the system components and valves, particularly methodologies for appropriately estimating acceptable upstream pipe sizes, are elaborated. The existing surge protection techniques for compressors are analyzed to highlight the advantages and disadvantages and from a future perspective, new approaches for detecting system changes and surges, are included. In the end, the concept of fault tolerance and its advanced applications concerning the anti-surge control for compressors are explained. This study contributes to the young researchers in the field of anti-surge control systems for compressors with the integration of fault tolerance to increase the reliability of the system.

Advanced Fault-Tolerant Anti-Surge Control System of Centrifugal Compressors for Sensor and Actuator Faults

Faults frequently occur in the sensors and actuators of process machines to cause shutdown and process interruption, thereby creating costly production loss. centrifugal compressors (CCs) are the most used equipment in process industries such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, and fertilizers. A compressor control system called an anti-surge control (ASC) system based on many critical sensors and actuators is used for the safe operation of CCs. In this paper, an advanced active fault-tolerant control system (AFTCS) has been proposed for sensor and actuator faults of the anti-surge control system of a centrifugal compressor. The AFTCS has been built with a dedicated fault detection and isolation (FDI) unit to detect and isolate the faulty part as well as replace the faulty value with the virtual redundant value from the observer model running in parallel with the other healthy sensors. The analytical redundancy is developed from the mathematical modeling of the sensors to provide estimated values to the controller in case the actual sensor fails. Dual hardware redundancy has been proposed for the anti-surge valve (ASV). The simulation results of the proposed Fault-tolerant control (FTC) for the ASC system in the experimentally validated CC HYSYS model reveal that the system continued to operate in the event of faults in the sensors and actuators maintaining system stability. The proposed FTC for the ASC system is novel in the literature and significant for the process industries to design a highly reliable compressor control system that would continue operation despite faults in the sensors and actuators, hence preventing costly production loss.