In this work a systematic design procedure of a plant-wide control structure is
applied to a well known benchmark problem of a large-scale pulp mill process (CASTRO;
DOYLE, 2004a). Because of the high dimension of this system it was necessary to develop
some additional computer aided tools for support calculations. It is based on the minimization
of the sum of squared deviations (SSD index) (ZUMOFFEN; BASUALDO, 2010) which is
done via the use of genetic algorithm. It represents a good trade-off between achieve
acceptable results with less computational effort. Previous works presented alternative
solutions but using several heuristic considerations for reducing the problem dimensionality.
The obtained performance with the selected control structure and the decentralized strategy,
presented previously by Castro and Doyle (2004b), are compared. Several closed-loop
simulations for critical set point changes are rigorously evaluated here.
