LAUSR

Because the optimal operation trajectory obtained under a fixed freshwater demand and known operational conditions could not achieve cost savings when these parameters change uncertainly over time, in this paper, a real time operational optimization method based on rolling prediction of hourly freshwater demand is proposed. First, via analysis of the historical data of hourly water consumption in a seawater desalination system, a new method for predicting the daily water demand in the next 24 h is proposed, and the predicted trajectory is continuously corrected and updated with present freshwater consumption. Then, with the well-established seawater desalination system model combined with the dynamics of a storage tank, a real time optimal operational problem with the strategy for its solution is given to minimize the daily operational cost. The optimization problem with differential and algebraic equations is discretized into a nonlinear programming problem by finite element collocation, and then a rolli...