Control System for a Fuel Supply Network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2023162297-A1
Application number	US-202117530523-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Nov 19, 2021
Priority date	Nov 19, 2021
Publication date	May 25, 2023
Grant date	—

Abstract

A method of controlling a fuel supply network, the method comprising: defining a directed acyclic graph comprising a set of fuel pathways; defining a set of reportable fuel pathways as a set of linear equations, the set of reportable fuel pathways comprising a subset of the set of fuel pathways; solving the set of linear equations to determine designated pathway quantities for the set of reportable fuel pathways; determining one or more throughput setpoint values for one or more edges in the directed acyclic graph based on the designated pathway quantities for one or more reportable fuel pathways associated with said one or more edges; controlling one or more control elements of the processes associated with the one or more edges based on the determined throughput setpoint values for the respective one or more edges.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A method of controlling a fuel supply network comprising one or more feedstock sources, one or more processes and one or more end-use points, the method comprising:
defining, using a processor, a directed acyclic graph representative of the fuel supply network, said directed acyclic graph comprising a set of fuel pathways, each fuel pathway extending between one or more source nodes each representative of a feedstock source of the fuel supply network to one or more sink nodes each representative of an end-use point of the fuel supply network and comprising one or more edges representative of one or more processes of the fuel supply network, wherein one or more edges are associated with a throughput determined by one or more control elements of the fuel supply network operable to control the process of the fuel supply network associated with the respective edge; defining, using a processor, a set of reportable fuel pathways as a system of linear equations, the set of reportable fuel pathways comprising a subset of the set of fuel pathways; calculating, using a processor, designated pathway quantities for the set of reportable fuel pathways such that the designated pathway quantities satisfy the system of linear equations; determining, using a processor, one or more throughput setpoint values for one or more edges in the directed acyclic graph based on the designated pathway quantities for one or more reportable fuel pathways associated with said one or more edges; controlling, using one or more controllers, one or more control elements of the processes associated with the one or more edges based on the determined throughput setpoint values for the respective one or more edges.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of defining a set of reportable fuel pathways as a system of linear equations further comprises determining, using a processor, average pathway throughputs for one or more of the reportable fuel pathways for a predefined time period.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the step of determining average fuel pathway throughputs comprises determining the average throughput of one or more edges forming part of the respective fuel pathway within the predetermined time period.

4 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the average throughput of one or more edges is determined by the setpoint values for said edge.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the average edge throughputs are calculated based on historical throughput for the respective edge and future edge throughput setpoint values for one or more epochs, each epoch being defined by a start time and a duration and falling within the predetermined time period.

6 . The method of claim 1 , where the step of defining a set of reportable pathways as a system of linear equations further comprises expressing a vector of the average edge throughput over the predetermined time period as equal to a vector of the average pathway throughput over the period of time multiplied by a pathway matrix, wherein the elements of the pathway matrix may only take values of zero and one, and wherein an element of the matrix is equal to one if an edge is a member of a pathway and a zero if an edge is not a member of a pathway.

7 . The method of claim 6 , where the system of linear equations comprises a vector of the average edge throughputs over the period of time is equal to a vector of the average fuel pathway throughputs over the period of time multiplied by a matrix, the matrix consisting of only zeros and positive constants, and an element of the matrix equal to a positive constant if an edge is a member of a pathway and equal to zero if an edge is not a member of a pathway.

8 . The method of claim 6 , where the rank of the pathway matrix is less than the number of reportable fuel pathways.

9 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to the step of defining a set of reportable pathways as a system of linear equations:
determining a set of reportable fuel pathways from said set of fuel pathways.

10 . The method of claim 9 , where determining a set of reportable fuel pathways comprises:
defining each edge as a member of a number of reportable fuel pathways for which a lower bound is the minimum of:
the number of pathways in the set of all fuel pathways which include the edge and a certain integer N.

11 . The method of claim 10 , wherein N is 2, 3, or 4.

12 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the set of reportable fuel pathways is determined based on a pairwise pathway similarity metric.

13 . The method of claim 12 , where the pairwise path similarity metric is a function of the number of edges that are common to each reportable fuel pathway.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein one or more processes are selected from the group of: fuel production, transformation, transportation, distribution, or end-use processes.

15 . A system for controlling a fuel supply network comprising one or more feedstock sources, one or more processes and one or more end-use points, the system comprising:
at least one hardware processor operable to perform the steps of: defining, using a processor, a directed acyclic graph representative of the fuel supply network, said directed acyclic graph comprising a set of fuel pathways, each fuel pathway extending between one or more source nodes each representative of a feedstock source of the fuel supply network to one or more sink nodes each representative of an end-use point of the fuel supply network and comprising one or more edges representative of one or more processes of the fuel supply network, wherein one or more edges are associated with a throughput determined by one or more control elements of the fuel supply network operable to control the process of the fuel supply network associated with the respective edge; defining, using a processor, a set of reportable fuel pathways as a system of linear equations, the set of reportable fuel pathways comprising a subset of the set of fuel pathways; calculating, using a processor, designated pathway quantities for the set of reportable fuel pathways such that the designated pathway quantities satisfy the system of linear equations; determining, using a processor, one or more throughput setpoint values for one or more edges in the directed acyclic graph based on the designated pathway quantities for one or more reportable fuel pathways associated with said one or more edges; controlling, using one or more controllers, one or more control elements of the processes associated with the one or more edges based on the determined throughput setpoint values for the respective one or more edges.

16 . The system of claim 15 , further comprising a master controller, the master controller comprising one or more controllers operable to control the one or more control elements of the respective processes associated with the one or more edges.

17 . The system of claim 16 , wherein the master controller further comprises a sensor module operable to receive and process sensor data from one or more sensors associated with the respective processes associated with the one or more edges.

18 . The system of claim 15 , wherein one or more processes are selected from the group of: fuel production, transformation, transportation, distribution, or end-use processes.

19 . A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of controlling a fuel supply network comprising one or more feedstock sources, one or more processes and

Assignees

• Air Prod & Chem

Inventors

• Latshaw Catherine Catino
• Guter Eric J
• Chen Ye
• Isom Joshua D
• Stamps Andrew T
• Urich Matthew D
• Goheen Christopher H

Classifications

• G06Q10/0631 Primary

  Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations · CPC title

• G06Q50/06 Primary

  Energy or water supply · CPC title

• G06F30/18

  Network design, e.g. design based on topological or interconnect aspects of utility systems, piping, heating ventilation air conditioning [HVAC] or cabling (circuit design at the physical level G06F30/39; network planning tools for wireless communication networks H04W16/18) · CPC title

• G05B19/042

  using digital processors (G05B19/05 takes precedence) · CPC title