Process Information Extraction

You're invited to join the Department of Chemical Engineering for a seminar by Professor Jinfeng Liu, a Professor in the department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at University of Alberta.

Abstract

Process data and process models are important assets in process operations. As digital transformation deepens in the process industry, the industry becomes very rich in data. How to select the appropriate data for model or operation improvements and how to extract the maximum information from the available data are critical. In this talk, I will share our experience in addressing these issues from the perspective of observability – a fundamental concept in process control. We will first review the concept of observability and how it is related to sensitivity analysis. Then, a few process control relevant problems will be discussed to show how the observability perspective may help.

One problem that we will consider is simultaneous state and parameter estimation, which is essential for process monitoring and control. In simultaneous state and parameter estimation, the parameters are often augmented as extra states of the original system. We will focus on the case that the augmented system is not fully observable and show how observability/sensitivity analysis may be used to select variables for estimation. The application of this approach to estimate the soil moisture of an agricultural field in Lethbridge, Alberta will be discussed. In addition, the applications of observability/sensitivity analysis in process sensor placement and in the design of reduced-order estimators will also be briefly discussed.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Jinfeng Liu is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCLA, and MSc and BSc both from Zhejiang University. His research interests are in the general area of process systems and control engineering with the current research focus on the development of enabling modeling, estimation and control methods to address the great challenges in closed-loop agricultural irrigation for water sustainability. Dr. Liu has published 3 books, 1 edited special issue, over 150 journal and conference papers. He currently serves as the editor-in-chief for IChemE journal Digital Chemical Engineering, associate editors for IFAC Journal of Process Control, Control Engineering Practice, International Journal of Systems Science and MDPI journal Mathematics.

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