A Parametrized NMPC Strategy for Pressure Reducing Valves

Water loss due to leakage is a major concern for water distribution operations. Being mainly caused by pipe deterioration and high values of pressure, these have several negative features. Pressure Reducing Valves (PRV) are used in water supply networks to keep the pressure under acceptable values in order to reduce physical water losses. However, such process presents several nonlinearities and physical constraints leading to a highly complex model. In this paper, a parameterized Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) is proposed for the PRV combined with a water network. The NMPC consists in finding, at each sampling instant, an optimal solution over a prediction horizon taking into account the system nonlinearities and process constraints. Simulation results are proposed to show the efficiency of this control strategy and a performance comparison with standard PID control are also performed.