A high-safety active/passive hybrid control approach for compressor surge based on nonlinear model predictive control

Surge active control can expand the stable operating range of the compressor. However, the difficulty of flow measurement, dynamic uncertainty disturbance, actuator delay characteristics, hard constraints of control variable, and system security measures have not been fully considered in the existing active control system, which significantly hinders its engineering application. Therefore, a nonlinear model predictive surge active control method is first presented based on flow estimator designed by using a continuous-time Kalman filter for dealing with the hard constraint of control variable and the impact of actuator delay of compression system with dynamic uncertainty. Then, a high-safety active/surge passive hybrid control strategy is designed, dominated by the surge active control and supplemented by the surge passive control, to ensure the compression system’s safe and stable operation. Lastly, the simulation results suggest that the flow estimator accurately estimates the compressor flow. When considering the delay impact of the actuators and sensors and measurement noise on the system, the proposed method exhibits stronger robustness than the existing methods. The active/surge passive hybrid control strategy can successfully ensure the compression system’s safe and stable operation. This paper is of high practical significance for the engineering application of future compressor surge active control technologies.