Towards an Access Economy Model for Industrial Process Control: A Bulk Tailings Treatment Plant Case Study

A nonlinear model for the surge tank of Sibanye-Stillwater’s Platinum tailings treatment plant is derived and linearised. Three controllers (two classical feedback and one model predictive controller (MPC)) are presented for control of the plant, and it is shown that a decoupled proportional-integral (PI) control structure, as would be employed in practice, performs the worst, while a nonlinear MPC controller provides the best performance. To illustrate an access economy model concept for industrial process control, a cloud platform to facilitate the competition between various controllers is presented and a scenario given with the three controllers competing to control the surge tank process. The platform is shown to provide the plant access to a controller that performs better than what is available locally.