2015 European Control Conference (ECC)

July 15-17, 2015. Linz, Austria

Model Predictive Control for Pressure Regulation

and Surge Prevention in Centrifugal Compressors
Toufik Bentaleba , Alessio Cacittib , Sergio De Franciscisb , Andrea Garullia
Abstract This paper proposes a multivariable model predictive control scheme for discharge pressure regulation in
centrifugal compressors. The main novelty of the proposed
approach is that three control inputs are considered: the
rotational speed of the compressor, an anti-surge valve for gas
recycle and the inlet guide vane, whose variations allow one
to significantly enlarge the operating region of the compressor
and hence to enhance the authority of the control system. Surge
prevention is achieved by including in the model an output
variable accounting for the distance of the operating point
from the surge limit. Such distance is defined on a compressor
performance map which is invariant to changes in the inlet
conditions, and thus its computation requires only standard
pressure measurements available from the plant. Numerical
simulations show that the proposed control system is able to
meet the desired specifications, in the presence of different types
of disturbances occurring along the pipeline.

UPSTREAM
VALVE
V1
Ps

Inlet

Ts po,s

PT

TT

FT

FY

ST

Pd
IGV

ZT

Td

ASV

PT
TT

DOWNSTREAM
VALVE
V2
COOLER

Outlet

I. I NTRODUCTION
The objective of the control system of a centrifugal compressor is to keep the primary process variable (for example,
suction/discharge pressure or mass flow rate) at a desired set
point level and to track the set point as quickly as possible
whenever a process disturbance occurs. At the same time, the
operating point must be kept within the safe or acceptable
train operating envelope, considering limits such as surge
or stonewall. Moreover, limitations on speed, inlet guide
vane, pressure and power, must be kept into account. The
reference application considered in this paper is that of a
plant for natural gas transportation, in which the centrifugal
compressor is required to maintain a prescribed discharge
pressure, no matter of the variations occurring upstream or
downstream along the pipeline.
The use of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for centrifugal
compressors has been considered and investigated by several
works in the literature. In [1], a linear MPC scheme has
been designed for anti-surge control of a plant with two
compressors. In [2], [3], [4], nonlinear MPC formulations
have been proposed for different plant families. Some works
use both the compressor rotational speed and the position of
an Anti-Surge Valve (ASV), also called recycle valve, for
anti-surge control, see e.g. [5]. However, in all these studies
the Inlet Guide Vane (IGV) is not used as a further degree of
freedom of the control system. In centrifugal compressors,
IGV is typically used to modify the mass flow rate without
acting on the rotational speed or compressor ratio [6].

In this paper we propose an MPC scheme which uses three

control variables: the rotational speed, the IGV opening angle
and the position of the ASV. The control system has to pursue
three main objectives: i) the controller has to maintain the
discharge pressure at a desired set point; ii) some processlimiting variables (such as rotational speed, inlet guide vane
and power) must be maintained within given ranges; iii)
the control system has to prevent surge, without sacrificing
energy efficiency or system capacity. A novel feature of the
proposed MPC approach is that a suitable distance to surge,
which can be computed by using only pressure measurements
available from standard plant transmitters, is included in
the model as an additional output to be used for surge
prevention. The performance of the control scheme is tested
via numerical simulations on an accurate model of a gas
compression plant, including performance maps from a real
industrial compressor.
The paper is organized as follows. The reference plant is
described in Section II. The compressor maps which are used
to compute the distance of the operating point to the surge
limit are illustrated in Section III. The MPC formulation is
introduced in Section IV, while the simulation setup and
the results on two specific case studies are presented in
Section V. Finally some conclusions are given in Section VI.

a
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dellInformazione e Scienze
Matematiche, Universita degli Studi di Siena, Italy. E-mail:
bentaleb@dii.unisi.it; garulli@ing.unisi.it.
b
Nuovo Pignone Ge Oil & Gas Florence, Italy. E-mail:
sergio.defranciscis@ge.com; alessio.cacitti@ge.com.

A dynamic model for the simulation of a gas compression system has been developed. Figure 1 shows the plant
model and the control system setup. It includes a variable

978-3-9524269-3-7 2015 EUCA

Fig. 1.

Schematic description of the gas compression plant

II. P LANT DESCRIPTION

3346

speed centrifugal compressor, driven by a gas turbine. The

compressor is equipped with an adjustable IGV and an ASV
which allows gas to recycle from compressor discharge to
inlet. The compressor dynamic model includes both the fluid
dynamics equations and nonlinear functions which describe
the characteristics of the specific compressor. In particular,
the dynamics of the mass flow wc is
 c

pc
1
1 wc
(1)
w c =
Ts
pd
where Tc is the temperature at suction, pd is the discharge
pressure, c is the convergence factor, and pc is the internal
compressor pressure. The latter is computed as a nonlinear
function of both gas properties and of the control inputs
(namely, speed and IGV). In this work, such function is
given in terms of a lookup table, derived from real data of
an industrial centrifugal compressor.
Two volumes are present in the plant, one at suction (V 1)
and another one at discharge of the compressor (V 2). They
are equipped with an upstream and downstream valve (U V
and DV , respectively) to simulate different load conditions.
Closing or opening of these valves cause sudden variations in
the flow at the upstream and downstream of the plant. These
events represent disturbances that affect the compression
system due, for example, to changes that occur along the
pipeline. The plant includes several transmitters, measuring
the following variables: rotational speed (ST), inlet guide
vane position (ZT), anti-surge valve position (FY), temperature (TT), pressure (PT), and differential pressure across
the suction orifice (FT). The model also includes a cooler
for gas cooling. By changing the position of the IGV, it
is possible to modify the compressor characteristics, thus
enlarging the region of feasible operating conditions. In other
words, the use of IGV as an additional control variable
provides a significant enhancement of the authority of the
control system, both in terms of performance and for surge
prevention. A more detailed description of the complete plant
model can be found in [7].
The characteristics of a centrifugal compressor are usually
described through suitable maps, usually known as performance maps, which also allow one to define the distance
of the operating point from critical conditions, like surge or
choke. The maps adopted in the present work are described
next.
III. C ENTRIFUGAL C OMPRESSOR M AP
In this section, the compressor performance map are
introduced and their use for surge prevention is explained.
Usually, the performance of the compressor is described in
terms of the polytropic head Hp and the volumetric flow in
suction Qv . This is referred to as the (Hp vs Qv ) map. The
polytropic head is the amount of work required to compress
a unit mass of gas by a polytropic process, and it is defined
as
R 1
Zav R Ts
c
(2)
Hp =
MW

Hp [kJ/kg]

SLL
SCL
Choke line
Speed lines
Resistance line

ds OP

ax
s

pe
ed

V
IG

SM
Min

V
IG

spe
ed

Qv [m3 /s]
Fig. 2.

Hp vs Qv centrifugal compressor performance map.

where Z is the compressibility factor, R is the specific

gas constant, T denotes temperature, M W is the molecular
weight of the gas, Rc is the pressure ratio (Pd /Ps ), and is
the polytropic exponent. Throughout the paper, the subscripts
s, av and d mean at compressor suction, average, and at
compressor discharge, respectively. A simplified expression
for the volumetric flow Qv is
r
Po,s Zs R Ts
Qv = A
(3)
Ps M W
where A is the orifice coefficient and Po,s is the differential
pressure across the orifice plate in suction, measured by the
FT transmitter.
The centrifugal compressor operating behavior can be
represented in the (Hp vs Qv ) compressor map as shown
in Figure 2. The feasible region of the map is limited by the
resistance lines and the speed lines. The former are the Surge
Limit Line (SLL) and the choke line (or stonewall line),
while the latter are defined by the minimum and maximum
permissible rotational speed of the compressor. The figure
also shows the so-called Surge Control Line (SCL), which is
used in standard control schemes to activate protections for
surge prevention. In steady state, the operating point (OP)
of the compressor is always located at the intersection of
a line of constant speed and a line of constant resistance,
where the system resistance lines are based on compressor
characteristics and pipeline conditions [8]. The Surge Margin
(SM) is the distance from the SCL to the SLL (usually, about
10%). The distance to surge ds is defined as the relative
distance from the OP to the SLL (expressed in percent). The
black arrows show how the feasible region moves within the
(Hp vs Qv ) map, when the IGV opening is increased or
decreased.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the (Hp vs Qv ) map is
not easy to used for surge prevention of the centrifugal
compressor, due to the fact that these coordinates strongly
depend on the inlet conditions which are typically not
constant. The inlet conditions are basically the property

3347

 r |OP = h
r |SP
h

r vs q2 ) compressor map
A. The (h
s
From equation (2) and (3), the ratio of Hp to Q2v can
be computed without measuring the molecular weight. If
compressibility variations are assumed to be negligible, one
has
Rc 1
av Ts
RZ
Hp
hr

MW
2

(4)
P
RZs Ts
o,s
Q2v
qs

Ps

MW

where the reduced polytropic head hr and reduced flow rate

in suction qs are defined as
Po,s
Rc 1
,
qs2 =
.
(5)

Ps
The process variables Rc , Po,s and Ps are easily measured by the available pressure and differential pressure
transmitters. The only variable which remains to be determined is the polytropic exponent (). However, for a fairly
wide variety of applications one can assume that 1 is a
reasonable approximation. Hence, one gets
hr =

hr R c 1
=
=
qs2
qs2

Pd
Ps 1
Po,s
Ps

(6)

where the rightmost term is not affected by the gas composition and it depends only on pressure measurements that
can be obtained from the plant. This motivates the use of
r = Rc 1 and q2 = q 2 Ps
a map whose coordinates are h
s
s

(where the constant Ps is the compressor inlet pressure at

design conditions and it is used here only for normalization
purposes). In the following, we will refer to these coordinates
r vs q2 ) map (sometimes addressed in the literature
as the (h
s
as nearly invariant coordinates, see [9]).
r vs q2 ) coordinates
B. Distance to surge in the (h
s
In order to prevent surge, the control scheme needs a
measure of the distance of the operating point to the surge
limit line. As discussed above, the location of the operating
r vs q2 ) map is computed from available
point in the (h
s
measurements. For each operating point, a corresponding
Surge Point (SP) is defined as the point on the SLL which
r as the operating point. The relative
has the same value of h
distance to surge s is then defined as
r , IGV )
F(h
(7)
s =
qs2 |SP

SC
L

SL
L

of gas (such as molecular weight M W , compressibility

factor Z, etc.) and the specific gas composition in mole
percent. Measurements of these quantities are usually not
available to the control system, as they would require the
use of expensive equipments. Usually, only temperature and
pressure measurements are available in industrial plants.
In order to overcome this problem, a common approach is
to use alternative compressor maps that are invariant to inlet
conditions. In the literature, many different coordinate combinations for the analysis of the compressor performance, or
for surge prevention, have been proposed (see, e.g., [9], [10],
[8]). Only few of these are invariant to changes in the inlet
conditions. The ones used in this work are introduced next.

SP

OP
s

qs2 |SP

qs2 |OP

r vs q2 ) with safety margin b and

Fig. 3. Compressor performance map (h
s
distance to surge s .

r , IGV ) models the distance from

where the function F(h
the OP to the SP and qs2 |SP is the value of qs2 at SP. Notice
r
that the position of the SP on the SLL depends on both h
and IGV, because changes in the IGV position modify also
the position of the SLL on the map. Figure 3 shows the
SLL for a constant value of IGV, the operating point and the
corresponding surge point. By measuring the values of qs2 at
the OP and SP, the distance to surge becomes

 2
qs |OP
1 100.
(8)
s =
qs2 |SP
If the surge margin in the (Hp vs Qv ) coordinates is assumed
to be 10%, then qs |SCL = 1.1 qs |SP . By substituing into (8),
r vs q2 ) map is given
one gets that the surge margin in the (h
s
by b = 21% (see Fig. 3).
IV. M ODEL P REDICTIVE C ONTROL D ESIGN
In this section, the MPC approach proposed for the considered plant is presented. The input, state and output variables
of the plant are as follows.
Input variables:
u1 : commanded inlet guide vane [deg].
u2 : commanded rotational speed [rpm].
u3 : commanded anti-surge vane [%].
State variables:
x1 : mass flow rate [kg/s].
x2 : actual rotational speed [rpm].
x3 : actual inlet guide vane [deg].
x4 : suction pressure [bara].
x5 : discharge pressure [bara].
x6 : actual anti-surge vane [%].
Output variables:
y1 : discharge pressure [bara].
y2 : relative distance to surge s in (8) [%].
y3 : compressor power with respect to nominal
power provided by the turbine [%].

3348

MPC techniques usually require an analytical model of

the plant to be controlled. Unfortunately, besides analytic
expressions for the compressor flow dynamics, the upstream/downstream volumes and the control actuators, the
model contains also lookup tables representing the compressor maps and the gas characteristics. For these reasons,
linearized models around the considered operating points
have been generated by applying the function linearize of
the Matlab/Simulink Control Toolbox to the Simulink model
of the plant described in Section III. The linearised dynamics
around the nominal operating conditions are used only for
solving the MPC optimisation problems, as they are able to
capture the dominant dynamics of the plant.
The general MPC problem for the multi-input multi-output
system is formulated as
( m1
3 
2
X X

 uh
min
w uh (k + i|k)
u(k|k),...,u(p1+k|k)

i=0

h=1

3 
2
X

 uh
uh (k + i|k)
+
w

h=1
3 
X
h=1

2
 yh 
sp 
w yh (k + i + 1|k) yh 

(9)

!)

subject to the linearised dynamic model of the plant and the

constraints
yhmin yh (k + i + 1|k) yhmax
umin
uh (k + i|k) umax
h
h
umin
uh (k + i|k) umax
h
h
uh (k + j|k) = 0
for h = 1, 2, 3, i = 0, . . . , m 1, j = p, . . . , m 1.
In (9), y(k + i|k) denotes the predicted output value at
time (k + i), based on the information available at time k;
u(k + i|k) is the input value at time k + i, for the input
sequence starting at time k; u(k + i|k) = u(k + i + 1|k)
u(k + i|k) and y sp is the set-point reference value of the
output. The tuning parameters of the MPC scheme are: the
prediction horizon length m, the control horizon length p,
the input weights wuh , the input increment weights wuh ,
and the output weights wyh . In particular, in the considered
application the output weights wy2 and wy3 have been set
to zero, because the control objective is to regulate only
the output pressure to a desired reference value y1sp , while
the other two outputs enter only in the constraints of the
optimization problem (9) to enforce surge prevention and
guarantee that the gas turbine power limitations are satisfied.
Notice that the above formulation includes also other hard
process constraints, involving both control input variables
and their rates. The cost function is minimized by using the
quadratic programming solver provided by the Matlab Model
Predictive Control Toolbox [11].

in the overall plant model. In particular, the results of

two diferent case studies are presented, corresponding to
different types of load disturbances acting on the upstream
and downstream volumes of the plant.
A. Simulation Setup
At the beginning of the simulations, the centrifugal compressor is assumed to be operating at steady state, with an
upstream volume V1 = 65.7 [m3 ] and a downstream volume
V2 = 80 [m3 ]. The upstream valve opening is initially set
to U V = 45%, while that of the downstream valve to
DV = 90.5%. Temperature at suction and discharge are
Ts = 2.5 [C] and Td = 42.5 [C], respectively. The gas
molecular weight is M W = 18.592 [g/mol]. The values uss ,
xss , y ss of input, state and output variables, at the resulting
nominal steady state operating conditions, are reported in
Table I. The linearized model around this operating point
has been discretized with sampling time equal to 1 [s].
In the MPC optimization problem, the following weights
have been set, after an extensive trial and error procedure:
wu1 = wu2 = 0 (only variation rates of IGV and speed are
penalized), wu3 = 1, wu1 = 5, wu2 = 0.1, wu3 = 1,
wy1 = 30. A prediction horizon of m = 5 time intervals has
been chosen. The manipulated variables are optimized over
p = 2 control steps. A key issue affecting the authority of
the control system is clearly given by the constraints on the
control inputs and their rates, which are due to the physical
limitations of the actuators. In the considered setting, they
have been considered as follows:

70 u1 10
and 4 u1 4,
IGV:
Speed: 4270 u2 6405 and 15 u2 15,

ASV:
0 u3 100
and 5 u3 50.
The output set-point for pressure regulation and output
constraints are given by

sp
Discharge pressure: y1 = y1ss ,
Distance to surge: y2 b1 ,

Compressor power: 30 y3 100.

In the considered case studies, the reference discharge pressure is equal to the discharge pressure at steady state, which
means that such a value must be maintained by the control
system, no matter of the disturbances occurring along the
pipeline, which are modeled in terms of variations of the
upstream and downstream valve openings.
B. Case Study I
In this test, we close slowly the upstream and downstream
valves as shown in Figure 5. Notice that, by closing the

V. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION O F MPC C ONTROLLER

In this section, the performance of the multivariable MPC
control scheme is evaluated through numerical simulations
3349

TABLE I
N OMINAL OPERATING CONDITIONS CONSIDERED IN THE SIMULATIONS
Parameter
xss
1
ss
xss
2 = u2
ss
ss
x3 = u1
xss
4

Value
463.6
6053.3
0
71.6

Unit
[kg/s]
[rpm]
[deg]
[bara]

Parameter
ss
xss
5 = y1
ss
xss
=
u
6
3
ss
y2
y3ss

Value
121.2
0
126.9
95

Unit
[bara]
[%]
[%]
[%]

Inputs

Outputs

122
121.8

20

121.6

pd
pss
d

y1

u1

40

121.4

60

121.2
121

6100
50

SLL
SCL

40
6050

ds

u2

30
20
6000
10
0
5950
4
100
3
90

y3

u3

80

70

60

50
0

50

100

150

200

50

time [s]

150

200

Case study I. Input and output signals.

valves the flow rate is reduced, which drives the compressor

operating point towards the surge region. The results of the
simulation are presented in Figure 4, which shows the three
inputs (IGV position, rotational speed, and ASV position)
and the three outputs of the system, namely the discharge
pressure, the distance to surge and the compressor power.
The distance to surge is reported in terms of ds , as defined
in the (Hp vs Qv ) map (and not in terms of the actual
y2 = s used by the MPC) because this is the standard
practice in industrial applications. The control system is able
to regulate the output pressure with negligible tracking error,
while keeping all the input and output variables within the
prescribed limitations and the operating point faraway from
the surge control line. It can be observed that when the valves
start closing, IGV is first used to regulate the pressure, while
the speed starts changing only after IGV is saturated at -70
deg. Moreover, a moderate opening of the anti-surge valve
occurs to improve pressure regulation, when rotational speed
is decreasing at the maximum admissible rate.
C. Case Study II
The second simulation test is conducted starting from the
same operating point; the only difference is in the profile
of the closing upstream/downstream valve, which undergo a
step change instead of a slow closing, as shown in Figure 7.
This sudden closing of the valves causes a large upset, which
quickly moves the operating point close to the surge limit
line. Without control, the operating point would cross the
surge limit line in less than 5 [s]. Figure 6 shows the resulting

100
UV
DV

90
80

U V /DV [%]

Fig. 4.

100

time [s]

70
60
50
40
30
20
0

50

100

150

200

250

time [s]

Fig. 5.

Case study I: upstream and downstream valve opening.

evolution of the input and output variables. Clearly, in this

case the predictive controller detects that the distance to
surge is rapidly decreasing and reacts with a fast opening
of the anti-surge valve. This causes the quick rebound of the
operating point throughout the time interval from 20 [s] to
27 [s]. After that, being IGV saturated at -70 [deg] and shaft
speed decaying at the maximum admissible rate, the closure
of the ASV is used to guarantee tracking of the reference
discharge pressure.
VI. C ONCLUSION
A new multivariable model predictive control scheme
has been proposed for a centrifugal compressor in a gas
transportation plant. Numerical simulations has shown that

3350

Inputs

Outputs

132
130

20

128

y1

u1

pd
pss
d

126

40
124
60
122
100
SLL
SCL

6000
80
5500

ds

u2

60

5000

40
20

4500
0
100

100

80

y3

u3

80
60

60

40
20

40

0
0

50

100

150

200

time [s]
Fig. 6.

U V /DV [%]

80
70
60
50
40
30
100

150

200

time [s]

Fig. 7.

200

R EFERENCES

DV

50

150

Case study II. Input and output signals.

UV

20
0

100

time [s]

100
90

50

Case study II: upstream and downstream valve opening.

the proposed approach is able to meet the requirements

in terms of both discharge pressure regulation and surge
prevention, under different types of variations in the upstream
and downstream conditions along the pipeline. In particular, it has been observed that the anti-surge valve, besides
guaranteeing protection from surge when a critical process
upset occurs, is also useful in the pressure regulation task,
especially when the other control variables are saturated or
they already reached their maximum rate of variation. Future
work will concern the use of explicit MPC formulations and
the investigation of LPV models for describing the plant
dynamics under different operating conditions.

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